


Rules of Diplomacy

by lettersfromnowhere



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ambassador Katara, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Idiots in Love, NBS Secret Santa 2020, Overdramatic Love Confessions, Sneaking Around, i Promised Ola This Wouldn’t Be Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 34,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27834025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: In which Ambassador Katara takes the Fire Nation by storm and its leader, it must be said, is not even remotely displeased.(A Secret Santa gift.)
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 384
Kudos: 336





	1. Hospitate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FIRELORDKATARA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FIRELORDKATARA/gifts).



> This was written for the absolutely lovely, stunning, gorgeous, unmatched Ola, aka @FIRELORDKATARA on Twitter and @sirionstrider on Tumblr, for the NBS group chat's secret Santa exchange. She asked for "Ambassador Katara and Fire Lord Zuko, softness, and NO ANGST" (wow, personal callout?) - I hope I deliver to her satisfaction. :p This will be updating once a day until Christmas. 
> 
> Ola, if you're reading this, two things: one, I love you to death. Two, TELL ME YOUR AO3 SO I CAN GIFT THIS TO YOU PLS NO ONE IN NBS KNOWS WHAT IT IS-
> 
> Chapter titles are based on random, snazzy vocabulary words that I got from this generator: https://randomword.com

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara arrives in the Fire Nation to begin her ambassadorship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters are supposed to be between 500 and 1000 words and even though 11 words of this are the word and its definition, it BUGS ME that this is over that. Oops.

_Hospitate_

_Verb - to receive with hospitality; to lodge as a guest_

_******_

_Breathe, Katara._

Inhaling the salty harbor air from the deck of a ship that’s still pitching while at anchor, Katara knows she has nothing to worry about. But she cannot help but feel a little bit of trepidation now, in the last moment of calm she’ll likely have for months.

Ambassadorship is the opportunity of a lifetime: here, as her tribe’s representative to the Fire Nation, she’ll be able to make the kind of change that would’ve been inconceivable to the girl she was barely two years ago. She remembers, vividly, Zuko’s palpable eagerness as he pitched the idea to her upon their last meeting, at a celebration of the second anniversary of war’s end just shy of ten months ago: she would have a voice, this way, and enough political clout to make that voice heard. She likes to think she’d have done that anywhere, but the balmy air of the Fire Nation (it’s overcast but the air is still tepid) feels warmer for the knowledge that she is – _finally –_ rejoining the rest of the world. The South Pole is home and family and progress, but it is also isolation and, oftentimes, constraint. This, here in the Fire Nation, is her chance to take up the fight of repairing a broken world, knowing that the whole world will be watching.

The prospect is as daunting as it is enticing, and she goes to great lengths to keep her spine drawn up and her chin high as she makes her way down the gangplank. Her stomach flutters with adrenaline, and she feels like running, but she forces her steps to slow. She doesn’t expect anyone to be waiting for her on the dock – she is entirely too new and, frankly, unimportant to most of the Fire Nation for that – but, in the unlikely event that someone _is_ watching, she keeps her steps steady and dignified. She’s not one to give much thought to what people say about her, but she doesn’t fancy the idea of word getting around that the new Ambassador is uncouth enough to be _running._

She doesn’t like it, but she figures that the trade-offs make the effort worthwhile.

Katara’s eyes are wide by the time she reaches solid ground, though she’s seen Caldera several times now: it never seems to lose its wonder. The Royal Plaza lies just inside the gates that delineate the harbor from the city itself, and Katara cannot help the shiver of anticipation that runs up her spine as she makes her way down the broad stone paths, eyes on absolutely anything except where she’s walking as she takes in the sight of the Caldera looming ahead. She’s walked this path only a handful of times, and every time it’s been different so she examines her surroundings closely for any changes she might’ve missed.

Not closely enough to know there’s a person in her path until she collides with warm, solid bulk and her eyes, no longer so tunnel-focused on the scenery, snap open.

“I’m so sorry!” she cries, wincing at her indiscretion. Whoever she’s collided with is audibly panting and she realizes, guiltily, that she’s probably hindered their trip to the docks; Katara flushes and opens her mouth to apologize again when she’s silenced by a hand on her shoulder.

“You okay there, Ambassador?”

Katara’s cheeks, already flushed, turn crimson at the sound of that familiar rasp. She jumps back as if she’s touched a hot iron and winces, again, at the obvious hurt that flashes across Zuko’s face when she pulls away.

_He ran here to greet me,_ she realizes.

It’s a thought she is entirely sure what to do with. Naturally, her addled brain settles on the worst of the many responses rushing around at breakneck pace, and she bends at the waist in a formal Fire Nation bow, attempting to school her mortified expression. “Fire Lord Zuko,” she croaks, attempting politeness and ending up with something more like…fear? No, that’s not it. Consternation? Slightly.

Ah, yes. _Pain._ That’s the tone. Katara is fairly certain that she sounds like she’s been kicked in the gut by a Komodo-rhino.

When she rises and meets Zuko’s eyes again, they’re no longer hurt, which she counts as a mark in favor of the awkwardness-deescalation tactic she’d chosen. But he’s so utterly nonplussed at the gesture that she isn’t sure how much of a win it really was.

“…Ambassador Katara,” he says after a moment of stunned silence. Katara _never_ bows – not to anyone, least of all to _him –_ and he doesn’t have the foggiest idea why she has now. “I…ah, I trust that…that your…voyage was…” he searches for a word. “Tranquil.”

And Katara cannot help but laugh and laugh and _laugh._

“Tranquil?” she manages to choke out between bouts of laughter. “Since when do you use words like _tranquil?”_

She’s too distracted by her own mirth to see the way Zuko’s face lights up at the sound of her laughter. “Since when do _you_ greet me like that?” he shoots back.

Katara shakes her head in a _disappointed-but-not-surprised_ sort of way, and clucks her tongue. “It’s called _diplomacy,_ Zuko.” She clears her throat and adopts a ridiculous affectation that, somehow, doesn’t need to be explained. “As Ambassador, one must _always_ be a loyal follower of _tradition-“_

“Agni, you sound like my advisors.” Zuko shakes his head and Katara can tell that, though he’s teasing, the struggle expressed in his aggravated huff is genuine.

And, once again, she cannot help herself. She steps forward, knowing he’s distracted, and pounces. Zuko grunts in surprise at the impact as Katara’s arms wrap around his neck.

“I missed you, idiot,” she murmurs, even though she knows very well that _she’s_ the idiot here – well, really, they _both_ are. It’s a kind of mutual idiocy that she never fails to find delightful.

“Hm. Some way to talk to your boss.” Nevertheless, Zuko’s arms tighten around Katara’s waist.

And she doesn’t let go when she swats his arm.


	2. Quintessence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Katara is the _quintessence_ of dedication, and Zuko is a bit concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there’s this headcanon. 
> 
> I like to think that the famous “I waited out here for you all night” exchange in TSR was...not an isolated incident, mostly because it amuses me to imagine that Zuko freezes up to the point of waiting outside Katara’s door for hours while he tries to figure out what to say. 
> 
> Naturally, I put that headcanon to use here.

**_Quintessence_ **

****

**_Noun – the most perfect or typical example of a quality or class_ **

****

**_**_ **

It’s been four days since Katara’s arrival when she finally emerges from her quarters - they’re far too luxurious for her comfort but she figures that’s supposed to be a mark of respect and doesn’t mention it – and when she does, she nearly has her second collision in the space of a week.

This time, though, she catches herself before she slams into Zuko and her lips quirk up in amusement instead of fumbling for words in a panic. “Were you just going to wait out here until I opened the door?” She asks, arms crossed. He hopes it’s clear that she’s teasing Zuko and not challenging him, but she can’t be quite sure. “You could have knocked, you know. It wasn’t locked.”

“Uh.” Zuko’s eyes dart around the hall until they land on something that is suitably unrelated to the cause of his consternation. “Um.”

_Okay, time for a chance of tactics._ “Well, good morning, regardless.”

“Morning.” He swallows a lump in his throat. “Uh. Sorry. I was gonna, um, check in. Since, you know…you haven’t been out of your room for more than an hour for four days.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Just…prepping for the meeting.” Katara’s not sure what’s more embarrassing – how unbelievable that sounds, or the fact that it’s completely true. She’s been working herself into a panic over the Fire Nation’s endlessly confusing tariff system, and she’s been holed up, poring over every scroll on trade law that she can find, since she arrived.“I can’t even begin to understand the tax codes for trade here and I was trying to get a head start so I wouldn’t look clueless in my first council meeting and-“

“You spent four days studying tariffs alone in your bedroom?”

Katara’s cheeks flush and she averts her eyes just enough to avoid eye contact. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“I don’t blame you. Those things are incomprehensible.” She glances up in surprise at the utter lack thereof in Zuko’s voice. “You should’ve asked me. No need for you to go to all that trouble.”

“…it’s my _job,_ Zuko.”

“Yeah, but it’s easier to learn these things from an actual person and not a bunch of dusty scrolls.” _And I’ve been waiting out here for three hours, worried sick that you were avoiding me,_ he doesn’t add.

Katara smirks. “Oh? Tell me, do you make this offer to all of the ambassadors you appoint?”

“Of course not. I can’t stand them.” As expected, Katara’s implicit dig sails cleanly over his head.

“Hm.” She pokes his chest with her index finger and can’t help but laugh at the quizzical expression with which he stares down at it. “It’s really not fair to play favorites like that, Fire Lord. I think I’ll have to decline.” She removes her hand but her challenging smirk stays on. “For _ethical reasons.”_

“…it’s not really a secret that I like you more than the crusty old envoys they send over from the Earth Kingdom, Katara.” Zuko’s face is quite flushed for someone who claims to be so unsurprised.

“No, but for political reasons, you have to pretend you don’t.” She’s not sure what makes her add, “or they’ll jump to _conclusions,”_ but she immediately wishes that she hadn’t.

This time, Zuko gets the implication.

“But…it’s _business.”_

“Business that brought you to my bedroom door an hour after dawn? Hm. Yup, _that_ checks out. Sounds pretty _businesslike_ to me! I mean, how much less suspicious could it get?”

_Please, somebody, end me now,_ Katara cannot help but think as soon as the words are out.

“Oh. Right.” Zuko’s hands disappear into the sleeves of his robes, which Katara is starting to suspect is how he shows his nerves when he can’t let anyone see that he’s on edge. “Uh. Sorry. I should…I shouldn’t-“

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that,” Katara cuts in, hoping her voice is gentle enough to convince him. “I’m sorry if I, um…took that too far. I just…I’m here to do a job and I feel like I’d be more of a burden than a help if I made you take time out of your day to help me with things I could be doing myself.”

Every single letter that Zuko has written since his coronation has lamented of his jam-packed schedule, but the idea that he might not have space therein for Katara seems to be news to him. “I _offered,_ Katara. I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t have time.”

Katara crosses her arms again. “Yes, you would’ve.”

His shoulders sag. She’s correct, of course: he doesn’t exactly have a sterling track record when it comes to overworking himself.

“Okay, then at least let me walk you to breakfast,” he offers.

“I was going to skip it,” Katara says cautiously. _Talk about feeding the rumor mill._ “I have a few more scrolls to get through.”

“And you say that _I_ don’t take care of myself?”

The carefully-ignored pinch in Katara’s stomach becomes harder to ignore at the reminder that she hasn’t eaten since lunch yesterday. “People would talk, Zuko,” she says feebly, but her heart isn’t in the argument.

“Would you kill me if I said that I didn’t care?”

Katara shrugs. “Probably,” she admits, but it’s evident that her resistance is too worn-down to hold out for much longer.

Zuko looks a little too pleased when she takes his offered arm, and it’s only then that the events of the morning sink in.

“Zuko,” Katara begins apprehensively, and she knows she should look at him for effect if nothing else, but she can’t bring herself to do it. “How long were you waiting outside my door?”

“…three hours.”

He can’t look at her, either.

“Is that just…your thing?” She holds back a laugh. “Waiting outside for hours until the person you want to talk to materializes?”

“Would you kill me if I said ‘yes’?”

“Probably.”


	3. Sophrosyne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara dives headfirst into the ~riveting~ world of tax law.
> 
> (Or: the "Katara fights grumpy old politicians" chapter that you probably all saw coming.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It wouldn't be an Ambassador Katara fic without some bad*** politician!Katara. I had a lot of fun with this one.

**_Sophrosyne_ **

****

**_Noun – discretion, moderation, prudence_ **

****

**_***_ **

“This tariff will be the ruination of the Northern Water Tribe’s export economy!”

“It wouldn’t need to be if your people stopped imposing obscene protectionist tariffs of your own on every single product you traded in!”

“Ambassador Lao, you _cannot_ be suggesting that-“

“Actually, he can.”

The two embattled ambassadors – one a rather codgerly Northern Water Tribe diplomat of whom no one is particularly fond and the other a cunning, calculating Earth Kingdom appointee who, somehow, is even less beloved – freeze where they stand at the sound of Katara’s voice. Clearly, no one was expecting to hear her speak, and for a moment Zuko’s heart jumps into his throat. He has no idea how these two men are going to react to an interrupting – and by a teenage girl, no less – and though he knows that Katara is thoroughly capable of managing them (and everyone else in this room), he’s a little too concerned to sit easy until he knows how this is going to end.

“Yes, the Northern Water Tribe’s tariffs are high,” she starts cautiously, “but there’s a reason for that. As I’m sure you know, Ambassador Lao, they had very few opportunities to trade during the war since they had to stay so isolated for their protection-“

“I don’t see what this has to do with the grain tariff,” Ambassador Lau huffs, but he waves for Katara to continue.

“I’m getting there.” She punctuates her reply with a poison-tipped glare. “Anyways. The Northern Water Tribe had to rely upon a primarily self-sufficient economy for decades, and now that it’s trying to shift towards an emphasis on trade, it needs to make sure that it keeps itself somewhat protected until it’s more established. It’s not exactly impossible to understand why their tariffs are so high. _But…”_

Ambassadors Lao and Ataraq both seem to gulp nervously.

“I do agree with Ambassador Lao that the level to which this has escalated is, frankly, absurd.”

“What would _you_ know of trade policy?” Ambassador Ataraq snipes. Zuko has to pinch his thigh to keep himself from wincing, but Katara doesn’t even blink.

“More than you would expect, Ambassador Ataraq.” She folds her arms across her chest and takes a few steps to the right for no apparent reason; Katara is in complete and undeniable command of the floor, and not even the warring ambassadors seem to be able to object to that. “Now. As I was saying, for the Northern Water Tribe to take some protective measures is not only permissible, but necessary. But the tariffs that are in place now go far beyond that, and you have to remember, Ambassador Ataraq, that the Earth Kingdom is struggling, too. It may have been able to conduct more trade during the war, but it’s still recovering from its losses, and no, Ambassador, the fact that the Earth Kingdom is getting the lion’s share of the reparations” – Ambassador Ataraq _never_ misses an opportunity to bring up the fact that the Earth Kingdom, which has to be at least three times the size and population of the Northern Water Tribe, is getting far more reparations than his people are – “does _not_ mean that their economy is stabilized.”

Katara feels rather proud of herself for anticipating that counterargument.

“But that’s _absurd!”_ Ambassador Ataraq cries. “If they’re getting all that money and they still can’t rebuild their economy, what are they getting it for?”

Katara chooses to ignore him and Zuko wants to smirk, because Ambassador Ataraq has to be the most obnoxious person he’s ever worked with, but he knows that he can’t.

“I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out for you, as ambassadors are expected to have comprehensive knowledge of all three nations’ affairs,” she says coolly, and it becomes all too clear why she spent four days poring over tax scrolls. These men, no matter how senior to her, never would have done so; she has a massive advantage in debates like this for having studied. “But the Earth Kingdom’s economy during the war was decimated in the west and relied almost entirely on the production of weapons and such in the rest of the country. They’re going through as much of a transition as you are.”

Ambassador Lao doesn’t even protest that she cannot speak for his country, which Katara knows is a good sign. Usually he’d object to someone not of the Earth Kingdom trying to explain its affairs.

“And you’re suggesting what, exactly?” Ambassador Ataraq crosses his arms.

Katara smiles, though it’s a guarded one and not the triumphant grin she wishes she could flash the Council of Ambassadors. This is where she’s been driving them since she cut in. “A compromise, of course.”

* * *

“That was really something, ambassador.”

It’s late, and Katara knows she should be asleep and decidedly _not_ consorting with the Fire Lord in her own bedroom, but she isn’t the least bit surprised to find him standing in her doorway. At least this time he’d knocked.

“ _Conclusions,_ Zuko.” Nevertheless, Katara swings her bedroom door further open to let him in.

“They’re probably drawing all kinds of _conclusions_ already after that stunt you pulled in the council meeting.”

Katara swats his arm. “I did good and you know it.”

“Oh, you did.” He doesn’t see fit to elaborate on exactly how well he thought she performed at the time. “I’m not sure why you were so worried. You’re going to do just fine.”

“Yeah, because I studied up,” she teases, taking a seat at the edge of her bed and patting the comforter to invite him to join her. “Told you there was a reason I did all of that reading.”

Zuko shrugs, conceding defeat. “Yeah, I see that now.”

They sit in silence for a moment before Katara raises and eyebrow and asks, “why are you really here? I know it’s not just to congratulate me.”

He fishes a scroll from the pocket of the robe he’s thrown on over his sleep pants and sighed. “Guilty as charged.” He hands it to her and watches intently as her eyes scan the parchment.

“Oh, so I’m your tax expert now?” she teases when she sees what it’s about.

“You’re good at it.” Zuko’s face is unreadable, which he is grateful for; he doesn’t even want to know what it would look like if it wasn’t. “And I have no idea what to do about this.”

“Hm.” Katara shifts so she can rest her back against the pillows and glances over the contents of the scroll again. “Well, I don’t like it, but I _suppose_ we could afford to make them jump to a couple of conclusions…”


	4. Jabberwock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko seeks Katara's help with a speech.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that IS actually a word, shhh.

**_Jabberwock_ **

**_Noun – Gibberish_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

“You look exhausted, Zuko.”

Katara isn’t one to pull any punches, and he knows that. It still doesn’t make it any less irritating when she requisitely tries to turn him away from her bedroom door.

“I’m always exhausted,” he sighs. “And I need to talk to you.”

“No,” Katara says firmly, taking one of his arms to turn him and placing her other hand in the center of his spine to give herself the leverage to push him forwards. “What you _need_ is to go to bed.”

  
“But-“

“Zuko.” Katara’s brought out one of her Stares, the kind she only uses when she’s well and truly ready to snap. “You are going to learn how to take care of yourself properly. And right now, that’s gonna look like getting a good night of sleep so you’re not stumbling around like a zombie at the ceremony tomorrow.”

“See, uh…that’s the problem.” Zuko runs a hand through his hair – loose for the night, which Katara has to try not to dwell on even after months of this – and yawns. “I kind of don’t know my speech yet.”

“ _Zuko!”_ Katara doesn’t make any effort to lower her voice for anyone unlucky enough to be sleeping in this wing of the palace. “The opening of the Solstice Festival is in _twelve hours!”_

“Yeah, I _know.”_ He fishes a scroll from his robes – he _always_ seems to have one on his person somewhere – and hands it to her. “Which is why I’m here.”

Katara crosses her arms. “And why would you come to me? I don’t know anything about speeches.”

Zuko shrugs. “I trust you. There aren’t a lot of people I can drop in on at four in the morning without getting stabbed for waking them, Fire Lord or not.”

“You probably have servants whose entire job it is to do stuff like this.”

“First of all, I don’t, and second of all, if you want me to go, you can just say that.”

“ _First of all_ , I already _did_ say that.” Katara looks like she’s trying not to laugh now. “And _second of all_ , I don’t.”

He looks up at her for the first time since he’d arrived.

  
“Really?”

She laughs softly. “Of course I’m not going to send you away. Come on.” Katara gestures for him to follow her and takes a seat on the low velvet sofa along the back wall of her room; he joins her, too tired to be sensible of the fact that he’s seated himself so close to Katara that their thighs brush every time he moves. “So…let me take a look at this speech of yours.”

“We’re not rewriting it, Katara. I have to memorize this by tomorrow afternoon.”

  
And if he doesn’t, half of Caldera City will know. The opening of the Solstice Festival is one of the few times that the Fire Lord – at least, _this_ Fire Lord, who isn’t a fan of speechmaking – ever addresses the common people en masse, and if he doesn’t know what he’s saying, it’ll be entirely obvious. The last thing he needs is to feed the rumor mill even more than he already has.

“No, but I need to see what we have to work with.” Katara reads a few lines, then scrunches her nose. “What _is_ this?”

Zuko sighs heavily. “The usual, I’m afraid.”

“’The usual’ being the most pompous, self-important load of sugarcoating I’ve ever seen?”

  
Zuko shrugs. “I don’t write this stuff. One of my advisors does that.”

“Well, yeah, I wouldn’t have said that if you thought I had.” Katara’s cheeks are curiously bright now.

“You don’t exactly censor yourself to spare others’ feelings,” Zuko mutters under his breath, glancing up at Katara – brow furrowed, lip between her teeth, dark circles beneath her eyes – before he brings his eyes back to the scroll in front of them. “Anyways. I haven’t really gotten around to memorizing this yet, and I…need to, but it’s always hard to do when they give me something like _this.”_

“Of course it is.” For once, Katara actually sounds sympathetic to his procrastination-induced plight. “Which is why I think you should scrap it.”

“ _Katara.”_

“No, I’m serious. The advisor who wrote this can’t tell you what to do, and, frankly, this speech is everything you’re trying _not_ to be. It’s…superficial, and pompous, and…I don’t know, it just feels dishonest somehow.” If the way her brow furrows more deeply with every line she reads is any indication, what she reads only backs up her prior statement. “This isn’t an address to the people, it’s an address to the nobility who only want to be told what they want to hear.”

_It reminds me of a speech your father would’ve given,_ Katara thinks. She’s read several of those, and they never fail to curdle her blood when she reads them. But she doesn’t dare mention it.

Zuko takes the scroll from her (she doesn’t miss his gentleness as he does, careful not to jerk the scroll from her hands) and scans it with raised eyebrows. “You’re…probably right,” he concedes. “But I’m also an extraordinarily untalented speechwriter.”

Katara lets out an anemic laugh, though he doesn’t know what at. “Then don’t write one.”

“Come again?”

“Just _talk._ I know it’s hard, but at least it’ll be from the heart.”

“People don’t want my _heart,_ Katara. They want to know that I have a handle on things and they can trust me as their leader.”

“Maybe, but that doesn't mean what you think it means,” Katara begins cautiously with one hand on his forearm. "Showing that you're capable...it's not about rattling cages or showing them how powerful you are, or intimidating them into complacency, you know?" 

“Not really."

"No, I'm serious. Trust isn't built upon intimidation," she elaborates. "You don't have to have some huge, lofty address to let these people know that you can take care of them."

"Try telling that to my council." 

“I think your people would rather you be honest with them. I mean, think of everything that they thought they knew and now have to unlearn. It must be really confusing for them right now, not knowing what’s true and what isn’t. And if they know that you understand that and you’re willing to be honest…well, maybe that’ll make them feel a little less lost, you know?”

Zuko doesn’t answer for a moment; he scans Katara’s face for a moment, his own unreadable, and then nods.

“I guess that does make sense.”

  
Katara smiles encouragingly, nods, leans over an inch to kiss his cheek, and lightly shoves him forwards. “Get some sleep, and come back to me in the morning.”

“For what?” Zuko’s face, already hot, flushes an even deeper shade of red. “I mean, not that I don’t want to! I do. But…what for?”

“Well, you’re going to need someone to practice improvising with, right?” she blinks up at him innocently, as if she hasn’t just suggested that he completely disregard convention (something he studiously avoids whenever possible). “And I’m probably the only person in this palace who wouldn’t have a heart attack if they knew what you were planning.”

“This is insane,” Zuko sighs.

“I know.” She walks him to the door, her hand still resting in the crook of his elbow, and he doesn’t know whether the way she’s been so touchy lately should be reassuring or terrifying. “But I have absolute confidence in you.”

  
“Probably misplaced.”

“Well, we’ll see what a few hours of sleep has to say about that.” She gives his arm a squeeze before he turns into the hallway. “Goodnight, Zuko.”

He wants to lean in and kiss her cheek as she had his, but thinks better of it (or, more accurately, panics at the mere thought). “Goodnight, Katara.” He manages, at least, a tiny smile. “Thank you.”

“Any time,” she calls after him, and he can’t say why he stops in the hall and turns back to look at her after a few seconds.

She is still standing in her doorway, one hand on the doorframe and the other across her middle as she watches him go, when he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have given up on any pretense of these being exactly 1k words now, so I guess they just have to be under 2k? I kinda hate this one but oh well.


	5. Aureity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara finds herself studying Zuko's eyes a little too often.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it really a ZK fic if they're not pining obliviously?

_Aureity_

_Noun - the property of being golden_

_***_

It’s hard not to notice Zuko.

Granted, Katara wonders how much of that is simply by virtue of his being, technically, her boss. After all, she works directly with him far more often than she’d expected to in the early days of her preparation for ambassadorship, when she had told herself to expect very little time one-on-one with her friend. But something tells her that she’d notice him even if she never saw him at all.

She makes it her mission to figure out why that is.

First, she considers the way he permeates this place so completely that she cannot tell where it ends and she begins. It’s ironic, because for as long as Zuko’s predecessors sought that kind of total association with the state they led, she is certain that none of them achieved it the way Zuko has without even trying. Perhaps it’s simply a favorable bias on her own part, but it seems to Katara as if Zuko _is_ the Fire Nation.

That explanation seems a little flimsy, though. After all, it isn’t hard for Zuko to embody his nation in her mind when he is all she knows of it.

Then she asks herself whether it’s the quiet deference with which he’s treated, the way it brings a peculiar kind of hush over the palace. There are, of course, members of the staff and officials of the government who grumble about their new sovereign and his endless assault on the status quo they’d grown used to under his father, but most are relieved: he treats them cordially, and his changing moods don’t threaten life and limb. He knows at least a third of his staff by name and it’s hard to miss the way that he’s changed this place. The palace feels as if it is letting out a long-held sigh of relief, and the gentle cordiality that is slowly eating away at the rot in this place speaks to a peace that it almost seems absurd to attribute to the peevish, temperamental Fire Lord.

That isn’t what she’s looking for either, though. Privately, Katara is proud; inwardly, she knows that pride is not an adequate explanation of the way she finds herself orbiting around her employer.

It takes just shy of two months to realize that it’s his eyes.

It seems so silly to Katara to attribute such lofty sentiments to something so small, but when he meets her eyes across the breakfast table with the most tentative of smiles and his eyes lock on hers, she knows that it’s the right explanation. Maybe it is the way his eyes have a thousand moods of their own, all of which are visibly different enough to read.

  
They’re like molten gold when he’s upset, as if melted by the scorching heat of the moment. She rarely sees them this way, but they are a sight to behold when she does; it is not difficult to see why firebenders’ eyes are so often golden. The color practically seems made for them, as ever-shifting and mercurial as the flames they wield. (She knows that her own are like a tempest at sea, dark and raging, and she wonders if he’s noticed that.)

They’re like amber when he closes himself off. They are hard, and they look like they have seen far too much, grown far too old in too short a time; no one is going to extract the things he buries when his eyes cool to amber this way. (Hers freeze to the kind of ice that cuts through ships’ hulls almost without effort.)

They’re a little darker, their color closer to copper than gold, when he’s truly exhausted.

  
When he stands in the right light, Katara can pick out the brown in the gold of his eyes, and she almost likes them better that way.

They’re like morning sunshine when he appears at her door with that sheepish smile and a scroll in hand. (She knows that hers are like waves lapping at a gently-sloping shore when she shakes her head, muttering something about ‘conclusions.’)

And when they look at her, she almost forgets that a world outside of that moment exists.

It makes Katara uneasy, knowing that she’s noticed so much without even meaning to. After all, she doesn’t read her other friends’ moods through the changes in their eyes, and she’s certain that none of the other ambassadors have noticed half the things that she has about Zuko’s. She cannot begin to fathom why she is so preoccupied with such a small detail when there are a hundred thousand other small details to concern herself with (and, granted, she _does –_ but this one finds its way in with them). It borders on fascination, and it seems entirely wrong to be so interested in – well, what even is Zuko, when he is so many things to her? Is her boss, her friend, her former comrade in arms, her coworker, her political ally? She is not sure; what she knows is that it is rather inappropriate, whatever they are to each other, to be allowing him to occupy her thoughts this way.

It isn’t as if that thought brings her any closer to the point of ignoring those eyes when they glance up at her through long, doelike lashes and eyelids drooping with exhaustion, though.

“Um. I didn’t catch that,” Katara admits as Zuko watches her expectantly, waiting for an answer. Her cheeks burn with embarrassment at having been caught so unfocused. “Could you…could you ask me again?”

“I was talking about a conference in the Earth Kingdom in a couple of months,” he tells her, furrowing his brow in confusion at how she could’ve missed that when she’s sitting _right there._ “And…asking if you would like to come with me.”

“Oh!” she straightens her spine, nodding almost frantically. “Yes! I mean, um. It would…be an honor?”

Zuko smiles tiredly and squeezes her arm in thanks; she tries not to read too far into the gooseflesh that rises in the absence of his skin when he pulls his hand away. “Thanks. It means a lot.”

“Happy to help,” she says tightly, wondering why her words feel like they’re tripping off of her tongue and falling to their deaths. “Um. Yeah.”

_Sunlight,_ she notes. _Sunlight eyes now. He must be happy._

She decides that she likes those ones best of all.


	6. Quaere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara is fond of questioning things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEARN, baby, YEARN!
> 
> This can sort of be seen as a companion to #5 (Aureity).

**_Quaere_ **

****

**_Verb (Archaic) – to raise a question_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

Katara is exceedingly fond of questioning things.

At first, she’s full of curiosity about her job, full of worries that she’s not doing it as she should be. “Should I bow?” or “do I need to stand when he cabinet members enter?” are among her most-asked questions at first as she nervously navigates the ins and outs of her new career. Then, when the basics have been covered, her curiosity kicks in.

“What’s the meaning of that phrase your cabinet members always say when they take leave?” Katara asks after a particularly exhausting meeting early in her tenure. They’re both sprawled out on the settee in Zuko’s office, Katara’s legs bent so they won’t brush against his; Zuko cracks his eyes open to answer.

“ _’Meiyo o motte deteiku_.’ It means ‘go forth with honor,’” he explains. “It’s really old-fashioned, and no normal person would ever say that in real life, but palace etiquette is weird.”

Katara tries to restrain her laughter and ends up with an undignified snort for her efforts. “Even your leave-takings are about honor,” she giggles; Zuko grabs one of the pillows from behind his head and lightly thumps her with it in retaliation. She shrieks indignantly, but she’s laughing too hard to keep it up.

She has practical questions, too. He, fortunately for her, has practical answers.

“How do I get the head librarian to stop glaring at me when I come in to look at the waterbending scrolls?” she asks, holding a poorly-concealed scroll under her arm. He has to smile at that – the librarian lets no one but the Fire Lord take scrolls out of the library, and she’s evidently gotten fed-up enough with that to resort to theft.

He makes a show of looking at the scroll under her arm, and Katara casts her eyes to the floor in embarrassment. “You don’t.”

“There were _six spoons_ at dinner last night. How do I remember which one is which?” Katara asks the morning after suffering through a fiendishly complicated state dinner held in honor of the visiting Earth King.

“The inner one is for palate-cleansers, second from right is for dessert, third is for seafood-“

“Who eats seafood with a _spoon?”_

“Fire Nationals do. Fourth is for the cold soup course, fifth is for the ceremonial wine-dipping, and the one on the outside is for hot soup. They’re in size order – outside is the biggest, inside is the smallest. If you can’t keep that straight, watch someone who grew up in the Fire Nation eat.” He avoids making the suggestion that she watch _him,_ because she’s pretty sure that he’d choke if he saw Katara staring at him across the table during dinner. “You’ll pick it up eventually.”

Katara frowns as if she doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t say anything in reply.

Soon, though, she understands the ins and outs of Fire Nation etiquette, and those are no longer the subjects of her questions, nor is he always their recipients. She questions the Council of Ambassadors when they’re being bullheaded, questions tradition when it seems extravagant or nonsensical, questions the splendid red-and-gold hanfu that she’s given to wear to another fussy dinner with some Earth Kingdom official (Zuko understands why, but he still can’t help but wish he’d gotten a chance to see her in it), questions Zuko when he isn’t eating or sleeping or resting enough. She questions decisions and orders and her superiors and her subordinates, questions herself and Zuko and just about everyone else, too.

But in all of her questioning, Katara never hits on the questions that Zuko wishes she would answer.

She _could._ It would be easy. All she’d have to was casually slip the question out during one of their many midnight meetings as she pored over scrolls and he forced himself to tear his eyes away from him: “why are you staring at me, Zuko?”

He knows that in reality, he’d be far too shy and far too flustered to make an eloquent reply to such a question, but in the fantasy world in which these questions are being asked to begin with, he knows exactly what to say. “I like looking at you, Ambassador,” he’d tell her.

She’d ask again after an evening meal, as he walked her back to her chambers. She’d glance up and catch the way his eyes followed her every movement, and her cheeks would heat; she’d smile wryly, as if she already knew the answer before she asked the question, and ask, “Zuko, why are you looking at me like that?”

He’d smile down at her just as wryly and reply, “because it’s how I feel about you.”

She’d notice the way his touches lingered a beat too long, of course. “Why are you holding my hand?” she’d ask, faintly amused – the Katara in these fantasies is always like that, gently wry and nimble in conversation.

“Because it fits perfectly in mine,” dream-Zuko says, even though reality-Zuko knows very well that he would drop her hand like it was on fire and stammer several hundred incoherent syllables of babble before he finally said “it was an accident!” and promptly prayed that Agni would strike him down where he stood.

He would kiss her at the upcoming New Moon Festival, of course. They would dance in each other’s arms, and she would be resplendent in blue and gold, and he would capture her lips as they joined the mass of dancers moving in the moonlight. “Why did you do that?” she would ask. And he would know exactly what to say.

“Because I’ve wanted to do it for years, Katara,” he would tell her.

But she asks him none of those questions, and reality-Zuko does not have to worry about his awkward replies when the questions that might prompt them remain unasked.

  
“Zuko, did you hear me?”

He shakes himself. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked if you were all right.”

“Oh.” He drops his eyes to his lap, disappointed for no reason at all. “Yeah, I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This comes to you 2/3 of the way through my second 9k-words-in-a-day binge in a row. (I'm trying to finish up the Hina-centric TWG prequel for my friend's Christmas gift and I only have one chapter to go but OH MY GOSH, AT WHAT COST. Anyways.) Please excuse the incoherency.


	7. Aggrate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko calls a late-night meeting to...express his gratitude. 
> 
> Or something like that.

**_Aggrate_ **

****

**_Verb – to express gratitude_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

“You wanted to see me?”

Katara is already on the alert when Zuko opens his office door to her. He never asks to see her in his office – he tries to avoid formality when it’s unnecessary, and there are more comfortable places to meet – and he doesn’t make this big of a deal of it, either. Usually he appears out of nowhere; today, though, he asked her hours ago, and a servant had arrived to escort her just before the meeting time he’d set.

They’ve been trying to _avoid_ stirring up rumors, so she isn’t sure why he’s suddenly decided to start involving third parties in their meetings. That alone is enough to tell her that this meeting is…different somehow.

But Zuko doesn’t appear to have gotten the message.

“Um. Right.” He clears his throat. “I, uh. I did.”

“You okay?”

“Me? Yeah! I’m…I’m…the, uh. The picture of health.” He coughs into his hand. “Sorry. I’m…a little bit out of it.”

“Oh.” This is odd behavior, but not so much so that Katara is worried. “Rough meeting?”

“Something like that,” he mutters. “Uh, anyway.”

“Anyway.”

“I called you here because, I, um…I wanted to talk to you.” He looks about as comfortable as he did the first time he tried sea prunes. “About something.”

Katara stares, waiting for him to spit out whatever it is he brought her here to say.

“About something important,” he amends sheepishly.

“Well, yeah, I kind of expected that after you sent a servant to fetch me at one in the morning.” She frowns. “Why did you ask me to come so late? You hate staying up.”

“But you don’t.” He yawns, as if to prove her point. “And I’m always up this late anyways.”

“If you say so,” she mutters. “Anyways. Is this about that school reform proposal?”

Zuko shakes his head. “No, it’s not work.”

Katara arches an eyebrow at the precise moment that she raises her face and Zuko looks like he’s going to choke on his next breath.

“I. Uhhhhh. I wanted to say…that…” he takes in a shaky breath. “Well, um. I think…I’m happier with you around.”

Katara’s heart falls to her stomach. “Zuko…?”

“And, um, you’ve been, um…really helpful. And, um…supportive?”

“Well, I’ve tried.” Katara laughs shakily. She’s not even sure what he’s saying anymore.

“So, um. I guess what I’m trying to say is that…you’re really important to me, Katara.”

“Oh. Um…” _is he…?_ “You’re…important to me too.”

“Yeah! It’s, um, it’s nice having someone to talk to.” His gaze drifts around the room. “It’s been a while since I had any friends around here.”

_Oh._

_Friends._

_Guess he’s not._

“Oh.” Katara looks down at her lap, feeling foolish for entertaining the notion. “I’m glad to be of service, I guess.”

Zuko looks almost frantic at the disappointment on her face. “And I’ve, um, I’ve realized that I really admire you. A lot. You’re, um…very-“

“Zuko, you look like you’re going to faint.” This is far too painful to allow it to continue. “You don’t have to do this, Zuko. I’m happy to help, and you don’t have to thank me for being your friend.”

“But that’s not what I’m trying to do!”

_Wait. Is he…?_

Katara sits back in her armchair, pressing her hands flat against the tabletop. “Then what _are_ you trying to do?”

“Well, what I’m trying to say is that I like having you around, and I…I want you to stick around a while longer.”

_Oh._ Katara had forgotten that the tenure of a junior ambassadorship - she’s too you g and hasn’t been working long enough to be permanently installed - allows her to spend two months at the South Pole annually; she’d planned the first of those visits at the beginning of her ambassadorship, not expecting to dread the thought of leaving the Fire Nation.

“You mean my visit home.”

“I’d never ask you to stay here-“

“What if I wanted you to?”

His eyes go comically wide. “Actually?”

“I do want to go home for a visit, but…not right now. I feel like I’m just getting the hang of things and I don’t want to break the momentum, you know?”

“Oh. Uh…that does make sense.”

“But I can’t reschedule,” she sighs.

He considers for a moment, evidently all too relieved to have something concrete to latch onto. “You could if you were tenured.”

“Zuko, you can’t.”

“Who’s gonna stop me?”

“It’s blatant favoritism!”

“You’re already overqualified!”

“I’ve been working for _six months,_ Zuko. Usually it takes _years_ to get a permanent commission.”

“Because ambassadors are _usually_ people with good connections and no experience who are totally unqualified for their positions.”

“Is this…is this what you called me here to ask about?” Katara bites her lip nervously. “Tenure?”

Zuko looks up at her, then at his desk, then at the wall behind her head.

“Something like that.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Zuko, I accept. It’s just…wow.” She laughs hollowly. “I thought you were going to fire me when you called me in.”

“ _What?_ No!”

“Why else would you ask to meet in your office when we never do that, and at such a weird time?” She’s too relieved and too disappointed not to keep going. “I mean, unless you were going to confess your undying love or something, and that would be crazy, right?”

She pauses. That free-falling sensation is back, and her whole world seems to narrow to the space of a pinpoint.

_You_ wanted _that to be the reason, didn’t you._

The realization feels like a long nap on a bed of hot coals.

“Yeah. Crazy.” Zuko looks deathly pale and even more sheepish than usual. “That would just be insane.”

“Well, glad we’re on the same page!” Katara says far too brightly, feeling for all the world like a fool. “And, um. Thank you.”

At least that’s genuine, even if the reason she wants to stay is one she’d rather not deal with right now.

“It’s an honor to work with you, Katara.”

She presses her back to the door as soon as it closes, shoulders heaving. _What_ was _that?_ She wonders with a shiver that has nothing to do with the ambient temperature.

(It takes an hour for her to realize that she did not even mock him for using the word “honor” in a sentence; that is when she knows that this is very, _very_ bad.)


	8. Bienséance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko makes a plan. Katara throws a wrench in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love watching these kids tangle themselves up into an even bigger mess with each chapter. :p

**_Bienséance_ **

****

**_Noun – something that is appropriate or proper_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

Zuko considers himself to be something of an expert in poor decision-making. After all, he’s been a devout student of the practice for as long as he can remember. This, really, should _not_ surprise him, but it does.

And now that the initial shock of realizing what he almost did has worn off, the shock of what he _did_ do has time to set in.

He wishes he’d fall asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, but he doesn’t. No, his brain has never liked him enough to make things that easy; this is going to be a long, sleepless night of _oh-Agni-what-was-I-thinking_ and _oh-Agni-what-do-I-do-now_ and _oh-Agni-she-probably-hates-my-guts-now._ His advisors are going to kill him for breaching protocol. Katara is going to kill him if she ever finds out what he actually meant to say but couldn’t get out. Then she’s going to tell Sokka, and _he’s_ going to kill him for…reasons, of which there are so many that he honestly can’t say which Sokka will deem most murder-worthy. Then Sokka is going to tell Aang and Aang will tell Toph and Toph will tell Uncle and Uncle will immediately know what was actually supposed to happen that night (he always does) and Uncle will be _very disappointed._

(About the aborted confession, of course, but the fact that he won’t care about the political implications so much as he cares about the personal ones doesnt help.)

_This is why they shouldn’t let teenagers run countries,_ he can’t help but think.

It’s about four in the morning when his mind turns from consequences to solutions. Confessing to Katara now is obviously out of the question, so he needs a new plan – preferably one that doesn’t involve spontaneous decisions with concerning political implications being made in the nick of time because, apparently, Zuko would rather gravely offend every government official he’s ever worked with than tell Katara how he feels about her. He needs a _real_ plan this time, not the halfhearted conviction that involving a third party or changing the setting of their meeting would hold him accountable enough to make him spit it out.

Too bad he’s never been a planner.

_I could revoke the tenure before anyone finds out,_ he considers, but even though it is the obvious decision, it feels like the wrong one. It would be cruel to flip the script on Katara like that and, besides, he doesn’t regret the decision itself – only the consequences. Katara is good at her job, has been from the start, and she deserves to be commended for that. She’s a better advocate for her country at eighteen with six months of experience than most of his other ambassadors are at fiftysomething; that is not nothing. Neat, easy, obvious, plan: scrapped.

_I could tell her why I actually called that meeting and explain myself._

That one gets scrapped twice as quickly as the last. She’d said herself that it would be crazy, and, in his desperation, he’d feigned agreement. He doesn’t know if he’d survive the embarrassment of straightening things out when it is so clear that she would reject his advances. Granted, she’d do it as kindly as she could, because she’s _Katara_ and that’s how she is, but one can only be so gentle when turning down a would-be suitor. He’s not going to risk it.

_Or I could…act like nothing happened?_

He has to admit that the idea is enticing. It requires absolutely nothing of him: he would not have to hurt her, or himself, or cause even more political fallout than he already has. All he’d have to do would be…well, what he knows he should’ve been doing all along. For all that he denies showing favoritism, he knows he does; were he to adopt Plan C, he’d simply be as formal and proper with her as he should always have been. It’s simple, elegant, mess-free – he can’t believe he didn’t think of it before. She is his ambassador first and his friend second (he tells himself, as if it’ll become any easier to believe); all he has to do is act accordingly.

He doesn’t consider that he might not be able to.

* * *

In an ironic twist for which Zuko was entirely unprepared, Katara seems determined to throw a wrench in his plans. She takes no more than an hour to start: it’s six when he finally manages to drift off, and a knock sounds at his door at seven.

He doesn’t even have to get the door – one of his guards opens it a crack, and Katara does the rest.

“I’m sleeping,” he grumbles before he’s bothered to look up and see who it is. He figures it’s some servant bringing an urgent new report that can, urgent or not, certainly wait half an hour for him to wake up. “What is it?”

“We were supposed to review that paperwork for the Southern Water Tribe reparations before breakfast, remember?”

_Oh._

_Oh no._

“Ambassador, this is highly improper.”

He should know. They may have become overly familiar, but he’d never expected her to show up in his chambers just after dawn.

“Oh, I know,” she says lightly. He feels her weight settle at the edge of his bed and he thinks he might set it on fire in a moment of sheer, blind panic. “Imagine the _conclusions_ the guard who let me in is going to arrive at-“

“Why _did_ he let you in?” Zuko props himself up on his elbows and tries not to sound as choked as he feels.

“Probably thinks we’re having a scandalous secret tryst.” Katara shrugs nonchalantly but her blush speaks to her embarrassment. “Of course, that’s not even close to true, and I’m just coming to check on you because you’ve never been late to a meeting” - _with me,_ she doesn’t add – “and I was getting worried.” She gnaws her lip and he forces himself not to watch. “I thought you might be mad at me.”

It is at that precise moment that Zuko realizes that he will never, _ever_ be able to manage “proper.”

“Why would I be mad at you?” His face heats. “I thought that _you_ would be mad at _me!”_

“For what? The opportunity of a lifetime?” Katara laughs incredulously. “Are you kidding? I should be _thanking_ you.”

“…why would _I_ be mad at _you,_ then?”

Katara shrugs. “For insinuating that you were in love with me? Because I made things awkward? I don’t know. I just…” she looks down at the bedspread. “I couldn’t stand to make things weird between us when you’re the only person in this entire country who _knows_ me.”

Oh. He is _doomed._

“That won’t happen.” He swallows hard, trying not to think too much. “Promise.”

“Okay.” Katara nods, relieved. “Walk me to breakfast?”

He glares at her. “I’m not even _dressed.”_

“Then put some actual clothes on. I’ll step out.”

“They’re going to think-“

“I‘ll tell them it was paperwork.”

“They’re going to start thinking that ‘paperwork’ is a euphemism for all that we abuse that excuse to be together at weird times.”

Katara shrugs. “Fair point, but…whatever, right?”

He’s not sure how she can be so blasé about this but he isn’t about to ask.

“Whatever, I guess,” he concedes.

It is not _whatever. She_ is not _whatever._

But he’s quickly realizing that whatever she says usually goes. 


	9. Curtilage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara takes a moment to think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We got Zuko Thinking(tm) last chapter, now have some Katara Thinking(tm).

**_Curtilage_ **

****

**_Noun – the area of land surrounding a dwelling_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

Some nights, Katara needs to get away: away from the prying eyes, away from the overwhelming workload she’s finding herself saddled with more often than not, away from the scent of woodsmoke and spice. She needs to be alone again, to feel the cold embrace of the night air as it envelops her entire body and not just what it can reach through a cracked window. She needs to _think._ And she has a spot, now, to do just that.

It’s not too far off, so no one will ever be unable to find her in the event of an emergency, but it’s on a part of the palace grounds that’s secluded enough to be empty at night. There is little untamed land or greenery in the lifeless bowl of the caldera, but this spot is peaceful all the same; it lies on the outermost periphery of the grounds, and it seems to be little more than a storage area for excess potted plants (of which, apparently, the palace has an abundance). Whatever the cause of their presence, this corner’s motley amalgam of decorative bushes, trees, and flowers, all in mismatched ceramic pots, is irresistibly charming, and – with the exception of the junior gardener who sneaks off to check on the new plant hybrids he’s always trying to grow (Katara keeps his secrets in exchange for his solemn oath not to tell anyone where she is when she comes back there) – no one ever disturbs her here.

It’s the perfect place to puzzle out the problem that is her future.

True, Katara is happy with her post: she feels, for once, as if she is making real change. Katara had little to do back in the South Pole, where she found that in spite of her achievements, her people looked at her and saw a sixteen-year-old girl, unfit for any work of importance. As Ambassador, she’s looked at with little more esteem, but she has the power to _make_ the old codgers of the Fire Nation allow her a seat at the table. She’s visited hospitals, used her…familiar relationship with the Fire Lord to push for any number of scandalously unprecedented social reforms, made most of them happen. She’s productive, busy, excited about her work – she hasn’t felt that way in a long time.

But there are unhappier implications, too.

For one, as much as she’d felt out-of-place at home, and as loath as she’d been to return at present, she misses it dearly. She misses sea prunes and Sokka and the cold, and Gran-Gran and her father and the comfort of familiarity. She misses the easy camaraderie of their little group during the war, and the feeling of being surrounded by allies even as pursued by enemies on all sides. She misses the feeling of invisibility with all of the prying eyes she’s inherited along with her post. It has been rewarding and exciting, being here, but it has had its share of difficulties. If she clings to Zuko, it is because, here in this palace full of strangers, she has never felt more alone.

She loves and hates the way that everything lately has seemed to lead back to him.

A week ago, Katara would’ve found some convenient excuse. _He’s the only person I know here,_ she would’ve told herself and everyone who asked, and no one would have questioned it, least of all her. It makes _sense._ She likes things that make sense, explanations that fit neatly into frameworks.

But that was before Katara arrived at the rather unfortunate and unfortunately undeniable conclusion that she is – madly, stupidly, questionably, inadvisably – in love with Zuko.

_Now what?_ She asks herself, sprawled out on the patch of grass between the rows of potted plants that form either side of a narrow aisle down the length of the alcove. She can’t pretend to know the answer; there would be no need to disappear and think it over if she did. She guesses, given the way he’d reacted to her love-confession blunder (she kicks herself for it every time she thinks of it), that Zuko doesn’t feel the same way, which rules out confessing; she could always try anyway, holding out hope that he’ll change his mind if she helps enough, makes enough change, flirts-without-flirting enough. But it’s not wise to risk it, she decides; he’s not mad at her, she’s not mad at him, and she’d prefer to keep it that way.

Clearly, then, she must say nothing of the feelimgs that threaten to spill over nearly every time they are together – when he is dejected and she wants nothing more than to take him into her arms and hold him as close as she knows how; when he greets her before breakfast with that sleepy, half-awake smile; when he looks to her in meetings for advice, asking her to jump in with nothing but his eyes. Katara thinks her self-control can handle a few more months of unbearable tension before her rescheduled trip home necessarily cools her off. After all-

“What are you doing _here?”_

Katara sits up so quickly that she sees stars, and stands so quickly after that that her knees almost buckle as she brushes the grass from her tunic. “Zuko!” she stammers, taken aback. “Wh-what brings you out here? I thought no one else knew-“

“Servants talk.” He walks over to join her. “You okay? You look pale.”

“Just stood up too fast,” she admits sheepishly. “You?”

“Uh, yeah. Why would I not be okay?”

Katara shrugs. “Can’t imagine why you’d go to the trouble of finding me out here if you didn’t need something.”

“Can’t I just wonder where you are when you disappear without a trace?” he squeezes her shoulder. “I had to ask, like, ten people before I found one who knew where you might’ve gone off to.”

“What did you need to see me about?” a stiff blush rises in Katara’s cheeks at the implication.

He shrugs. “I don’t know, paperwork?”

Her heartbeat catches on an invisible hook before it gets free again and takes off at breakneck pace. “Paperwork. Hm.” Vision cleared now, she studies his face, looking for clues. “What’s that a euphemism for this time?”

“I don’t know, needing to think?”

Her eyes don’t waver; the moonlight hits the left side of his face and she can’t help but note the way his left eye twitches occasionally, as if in pain. “Hm. Does it hurt?”

His eyes widen. “Does what hurt?”

She reaches up absentmindedly, still too deep in surprise at seeing him to realice what she’s doing, and brushes the back of her knuckles across the puckered skin of his left cheek. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 10, "hypalgesia," will be a direct follow-up to "Curtilage," picking up where today's left off. Wink.


	10. Hypalgesia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scar-touching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm ready to break the internet.

**_Hypalgesia_ **

****

**_Noun – diminished sensitivity to pain_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

“Your scar. Does it hurt?”

“Which scar?” Zuko asks lamely, his face heating up even though he can’t actually feel the brush of her fingers.

“This one.” Katara’s hand lingers, even though he’s already made it clear that it doesn’t need to, and his heart picks up speed because if she doesn’t move soon she’s going to know just how badly he _wants_ it to. “You looked kinda…twitchy. Like it was hurting you.”

“Twitchy?”

“Your left eye,” she explains.

“Oh, yeah, that just happens sometimes when the air is really dry,” he explains. “Nothing to worry about. I don’t even have feeling in that side of my face anymore.”

“Really?” Katara’s fingers unfurl and she _finally_ moves her hand, but when she does, it isn’t to take it away. Instead, she moves to brush tentative fingers across the surface of his scar. “Not at all?”

“Nope.” He’s being halfway truthful – he can’t feel anything she does in the vicinity of his scar, but somehow, every working nerve ending in his body lights up like a lit firework at the mere knowledge that she is touching him, even without themselves being touched. She ghosts cool fingertips across the surface of the scar and he shudders without meaning to. “See? Can’t feel that.”

Katara shakes her head. “But you just winced. You clearly feel _something.”_

_Yeah, I feel something. I feel like I’m going to catch fire. I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel like the fact that the girl I love is touching me and I can’t even feel it is wildly unfair._

Of course, all he says is “no, nothing.”

“Really?” Katara’s face begins to light up with mischief. “Nothing at _all?”_

“Nothing at all.”

She presses her whole hand against his cheek and her pinkie doesn’t quite fit, ghosting his jaw. “So you can’t feel this?”

He swallows hard. _Yes._ “No,” he whispers, hoarse.

Katara moves her hand away so she can trace the outlines of the scar with her index finger. “And you can’t feel this, either?”

Half of her finger brushes the smoothed-over skin of his scar, but the rest lands on the other side, on skin where he _does_ have feeling, and Zuko shudders again. He wishes he could stop himself but here, barely inches from her face with her fingers tracing his scar so gently that it is almost painful, his self-control is pitiably eroded. He thinks she could say anything at all in the next sentence she says and he’d agree. She could ask him to jump off the cliffs ringing the harbor, to fire his entire Council, to kiss her senseless, and he would do it unquestioningly after barely seconds of touch.

He is _lost._

“You’re shuddering again, Zuko,” Katara says softly. “I’m starting to believe that you might not have been entirely truthful with me about whether or not you could feel any of that.”

“That last one. You didn’t just touch the scar,” he explains sheepishly.

“You said you couldn’t feel it!”

_Okay, self-control, time to show up._

“You would’ve stopped if I hadn’t!”

_…never mind._

Katara pulls back as if she’s been burned, eyes wide. “You…you. You _wanted_ me to keep doing that?”

He nods, shamefaced.

“I thought you were just indulging me,” Katara mutters, glancing down at her shoes. “‘Well, I don’t need any help, but might as well make her feel useful,’ that…sort of thing.”

Time slows to an agonizing crawl as he considers.

“No, Katara,” he says, swallowing hard. “I wasn’t.”

“Could you…could you feel any of that?”

“Only when you touched something that wasn’t scarred. I wasn’t making that up.”

“So you wouldn’t feel it if I…” she pauses, contemplating.

“If you what?”

She rises on her toes to reach his face and presses her lips to the exact center of his scar.

“Katara?” Zuko’s voice comes out hoarse again, its usual rasp barely more than a pained whisper.

She braces herself with a hand against his chest and moves just an inch upwards before she presses her lips to another spot.

“Katara…”

She repeats the motion until she reaches the outer edge of the scar and he has never resented the lack of feeling in his left cheek more than he does now. Once she’s reached the edge, she plants one last kiss there, the outer corner of her lip brushing intact skin-

_“Katara.”_ Zuko doesn’t know why her name is the only thing he can get past his lips, but every time he tries, it is all that will come out. She hums softly in acknowledgement and continues.

Delicately, methodically, she kisses her way around the perimeter of the scar, her lips seemingly covering every millimeter of space there, and Zuko is suddenly almost absurdly grateful that she never did get around to healing his face. If she had, she’d never have done this – if she had, he’d have feeling here, and she wouldn’t have dared. There would have been no reason for this, for her kissing him, had there not been a scar, and a chance meeting in an alcove used for plant storage, and a twitchy eye (the scar tissue, somehow, messes with his tear ducts, or something – he can’t quite remember), and a question.

But he wants _more,_ and with every teasing half-kiss that lands on the skin where he still has feeling, he becomes less and less resolved not to ask for it.

“Katara?”

She reaches the end and looks up at him, eyes bright. “Yes?”

He has a feeling that he needs to be looking her in the eye for this. 

“Kiss me where I can feel it.”

“Zuko…?”

“Please, Katara.” His voice is still wrecked. “ _Please.”_

She nods tightly, nervously, and turns her face to kiss his right cheek, as tentatively and carefully as she can.

“Again,” he rasps.

  
Katara seems to understand, unspoken, what he is asking for, and she raises her face to kiss his forehead next.

_Again, again, again._ She kisses his nose, his temple, his chin before she finally stops and pulls away, hands shaky.

“Zuko,” she chokes. “What are we doing?”

He has absolutely no idea what’s going to come out of his mouth next and he’s somewhat surprised when it’s “um…kissing?”

“That isn’t kissing, Zuko.”

“Then what _is_ it?”

“It isn’t _proper_ kissing.”

“Oh.”

“Why did you ask me to do that?”

“Because I wanted you to.”

“But _why?”_ Katara’s eyes search his. “I know you don’t feel the same way about me, but-“

“Feel what way?”

  
Katara swallows hard. “You don’t know?”

“No…?”

  
She laughs hollowly. “Wow, you really haven’t been paying attention.”

“Do you…do you _want_ to kiss?” he’s still stuck on that– what even _is_ a “proper kiss”? “I mean…properly?”

“Depends on why you’re asking.”

“Because I also want to kiss you.” His brain is completely broken and he isn’t sure that he minds. “Because I’ve wanted to kiss you since you got here and I didn’t say anything.”

Katara can’t really do much more than gape.

“You, mister ‘that-would-be-crazy.’ _You_ want to kiss me?”

“ _You’re_ the one who said it would be crazy!”

“Because I thought _you_ were trying to confess to me when you were actually promoting me!”

“I _was_ trying to confess to you!”

Katara freezes, inches in front of him. Her hands ball into fists, her breathing comes in short, inadequate bursts, and her eyes are huge.

“You…” she blinks. “You think of me that way?”

He nods, wordlessly.

“But…”

“Kiss me.” He doesn’t try to reason with her, doesn’t give explanations. “Please.”

“We can’t do this, Zuko. I’ll get fired.”

“ _I’m_ your boss, Katara.” He’s too afraid to reach out his hand like he wants to, but he thinks his eyes get the point across. “Please, _please_ kiss me.”

“We’d have to sneak around.”

“I’m very sneaky.” He smiles in spite of himself. “Please kiss me, Katara.”

“You are _not_ sneaky,” she mutters.

“Katara, I’m in agony.”

“You said it didn’t hurt!”

“Not the _scar.”_

“ _Oh.”_ Her eyes widen again. “You…you _actually_ want to kiss me, don’t you.”

“I’ve been trying to say that for at least five minutes!”

“Okay.” She breathes in, out. “Okay.”

And before he has time to ask again, she grabs a fistful of his tunic and pulls him down to kiss her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't supposed to turn into the sneaking-around fic, but look where we are now! Tune in tomorrow for...well, sneaking-around.


	11. Quisle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara has doubts about what she’s getting herself into; Zuko reassures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t think I’ll ever be able to top “kiss me where I can feel it,” but here goes.

**_Quisle_ **

****

**_Verb – to act as a quisling; to betray one’s country_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

This is madness, insanity, absurdity. The very words of the ambassador’s oath that Katara took only months ago warn her of that.

_In taking this office, I vow my solemn intent to honor the trust which my sovereign has placed in me._

She twists the stem of the fire lily a servant had left on her night table this morning in her hands and wonders what her father would say if he could see her now, her eyes scanning the words on the parchment note attached to the flower over and over.

_Rose garden. Sundown. – Z_

This is madness, insanity, absurdity, and she never should have agreed to it. It does not matter that she loves Zuko when that love necessarily must pale in comparison to her love of her country. Never mind that, somewhere in the middle of that six-month blur of late-night meetings and bitten-back confessions and shared meals, he’d come to outshine the first glimpse of polar sun at the end of a long winter.

But she stays. For some reason, she stays.

He’s on the edge of late now. The sun sank below the horizon a few minutes ago and she gnaws her lip, willing herself to believe that he’s just held up. She knows him, of course, too well to believe that he’d break an appointment like this when he’d all but begged her to kiss him barely a day before, but it is difficult not to worry. Perhaps it’s a guilty conscience, the knowledge that she cannot afford to compromise her integrity or introduce a conflict of interest when she is here to serve her country. Perhaps it is doubt – maybe he was caught up in the moment, didn’t mean it. After all, she hasn’t seen him all day (which has, in all of six months, _never_ happened before), and she has no reason to believe he’s not calling her here to tell her that it was a mistake. Maybe-  
  
“Sorry I’m late.”

Katara feels like she might melt at the sound of Zuko’s familiar rasp behind her, and it takes all she has to manage a cordial smile when her heart is hammering insistently at her ribcage and all she wants is to run into his arms. “It’s all right. What did you need to see me about?”

“Do I need a reason to want to see you?” he joins her on the stone bench she’s been waiting on, glances down at the flower in her lap with a shy smile.

“No, I suppose not.” She manages a tight smile in reply and wonders when she started speaking so formally. Noticing that Zuko is staring at the flower, she holds it up. “Way to avoid involving other people, by the way.”

“Oh, I’m paying that servant triple to keep it quiet,” he replies with a little too much confidence. “Because I plan on doing that a lot. Need to make sure our postal service is reliable, right?”

“Postal service,” Katara giggles. Her (perfectly legitimate, sane, healthy) fears are dangerously close to forgotten now and she lets her head settle against Zuko’s shoulder, her palm against his forearm. “You’re such a dork.”

  
“You asked me why I called you here,” he replies, probably because he has nothing else to say.

“Oh, right.” Katara swallows hard and doesn’t miss the way Zuko stiffens in response. “Um, is it…is it bad?”

“Why would it be bad?” she feels his hair brush her cheek as he shakes his head. “No, it isn’t. I just missed you.”

“You…missed me?”

  
He moves away from her, slowly enough to let her straighten so she won’t fall without his support. When she’s sitting again, he takes her hands, and she wills herself to look up at him even though the way his eyes soften – _sunlight eyes,_ she thinks absentmindedly, _he must be happy –_ makes her spine feel like it’s melting. “Of course I did, Katara. I haven’t seen you all day.”

“That’s…very sweet.” She ducks her head, unsure what else to say. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to be so formal, Katara.” He’s clearly loath to touch her, but he chances a light brush of fingers down the line of her jaw before they settle under her chin and lift it to meet his eyes.

And _oh,_ the gentleness of those hands, the soft intensity of those eyes, the ardent quaver in that voice – Katara is coming more undone by the second.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” she murmurs, averting her eyes even though he’s still holding her face. “I just…I can’t shake the feeling that I’m doing something wrong. That I’m…” she sighs heavily, wishing there were a better word to use than the one on her mind. “That I’m betraying someone. Some _thing.”_

“But who? Why?” Zuko presses. “There’s not exactly a law on the books saying that a Fire Lord can’t be…involved with an ambassador. It might be frowned upon, but so were the Earth Kingdom reparations. You can still do your job, I can still do mine, and…sure, it’d probably be best to keep it on the down-low for a while, but we aren’t doing anything wrong.”

“ _Involved?”_ Katara almost laughs again; she feels lighter for the knowledge that she isn’t breaking the law, at very least, and she grabs hold of that knowledge desperately. “You’ve thought about this, haven’t you.”

“You _know_ I’m bad with words, Katara.” He nods. “And of course I have.”

“I’m…kind of surprised, actually.” Katara isn’t sure whether she pales or flushes. “I was so afraid that you were going to call me here to tell me that what happened last night was a fluke or something.” 

  
“Actually, the opposite.”

“Oh?”

He seems to flush _and_ pale at the same time. “It’s…sort of been all I’ve thought about all day.”

“Zuko!” Katara crosses her arms. “You can’t let me distract you like that!”

“Katara, your _existence_ distracts me.”

“…is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Make of it what you will.” He shrugs. “But what I’m trying to say is that…no. I didn’t expect it, but it was something I’d been wanting to do for a really long time.”

“Me, too,” Katara admits. “I kinda can’t believe I actually made a move, though. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“And I wasn’t supposed to beg you to kiss me.” Katara isn’t sure if she’s ever seen him more embarrassed. “I have to apologize for that, by the way. It was…undignified.”

“Zuko, that was the most romantic moment of my _life._ Don’t you dare call it _undignified.”_

“Really?” his face lights up. “You liked it?”

“You’re asking me that?” Katara huffs. “Zuko, the words ‘kiss me where I can feel it’ have been replaying in my brain since you said them. I agreed to meet you here when it feels like a breach of my ambassador’s oath because there was _nothing_ that was going to be able to keep me away from you. And I’ve been trying not to kiss you since you got here. So yes, Zuko, _I liked it.”_

“You…you still want to kiss me?”

“Badly enough to throw away my position, my reputation, and my loyalties, Zuko.” Katara laughs hollowly. “And it _terrifies_ me. But yes. I still want to kiss you.”

“Then…then why haven’t you?”

“You seem so nervous. You won’t touch me at all, and, I don’t know…” she inhales deeply. “You might come out of a scandal relatively unscathed, but _I wouldn’t._ And I can’t do this when there’s so much on the line for me if I don’t know that you’re going to be in it with me no matter how south it goes.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, I can promise you that.”

“No, Zuko, you can’t.” Katara squeezes his hands but can’t bear to look at him. “Which is why I need to know that you understand what we’re getting into.”

“But-“

  
“Zuko, if this gets out, you know what they’ll say,” she pleads. “You’ll just be a normal twentysomething indulging in a little secret romance. But _I’ll_ be some sort of loose woman sleeping in high places whether we’re even doing anything or not, a…corrupting influence or something, and it’ll be _my_ fault-“

“That’s _ridiculous._ I wouldn’t let anyone-“

“That’s the thing, Zuko. You can’t stop them.”

“Okay, then I’ll make you a promise I know that I _can_ keep.” He takes a deep breath, then squeezes her hands once more. “Katara, I promise you that if we get caught, and people talk, there’s no fall you’ll take that I won’t take with you.”

There’s nothing to be said to that and she all but collapses, burying her face in the silky fabric of his robes as her breaths come in shallow and shuddery. He finally, _finally_ sees it –what she’s wanted all along, his reassurance, his touch, his protection – and holds her the way she’s wanted to be held since she arrived in the Fire Nation. “I want you to know that I wouldn’t ask you to take a chance with me if I wasn’t ready to take the fall for it. Okay?”

“Yes.” She isn’t sure what she’s saying ‘yes’ to, but she doesn’t really need to be, and he seems to understand. “ _Yes.”_

“Then…” he gently frees himself from her grip and cups her chin again. “Will you kiss me again?”

“Will _you_ kiss _me?”_

“Are you sure?”

“Spirits, Zuko, _yes.”_

“Okay.”

Their second kiss is clumsy, hesitant, teary, and, in spite of the rose-scented air and the sounds of the birds and breeze and fountains that surround them, it almost completely lacks the romance of their first. But it is a sweet, desperate, promising thing, and Katara smiles when she pulls away to rest her forehead against his. Instinctively, her hand comes up to caress his cheek, brushing scarred and untouched skin alike; Zuko lets out a shuddery exhale.   
  
“Katara,” he says shakily. “Where I can feel it?”

She can’t help the smile that splits across her face and her right hand traces his profile, forehead to nose to lips and chin, then up the outside edge along his jaw (she notes the way his breath catches when her fingers ghost the shell of his ear) before they finally settle at his nape and tangle in his hair.

  
“Could you feel that?”

He closes the gap between their lips so rapidly that she barely has time to finish her sentence.


	12. Illuvium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara and Zuko spend a day off together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ola wore me down, and I have no self control to begin with, so y'all get an extra post this morning. Whoops. I swear I wasn't going to do this and now I am heh...
> 
> I kinda hate this one.

**_Illuvium_ **

****

**_Noun -_ ** **_material displaced across a soil profile, from one layer to another one, by the action of rainwater_ **

****

**

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Zuko has been waiting all month for this.

Though he has no meetings today, he’s out of bed barely past dawn on the National Worker’s Recess. It’s an objectively ridiculous and pitifully unromantic name for one of the Fire Nation’s few national holidays, a nationwide halt on work intended to boost worker morale during the war and perhaps the only good thing that Fire Lord Azulon ever did. But, ridiculous or not, the anticipation of the holiday is one of the only things that’s been dragging Zuko through this agonizing month. Today, the Fire Nation takes its annual day off; so does he. It is much-needed: he’s been so swamped that even sitting for meals and the latest of late-night meetings have been crowded out, so he’s barely seen Katara outside of the Council of Ambassadors’ sessions since the rose garden and he misses her more than he would like to admit.

This is his chance to make up for it.

Hurriedly, he dresses in the least-conspicuous clothes he owns, studiously ignoring the whispers of his guards as he slips out into the hallway and makes his way to the North Wing, where ambassadors who choose to live at the palace stay. For a moment, when he reaches her door, he simply stands there, wringing his hands and adjusting his clothes as if fidgeting will distract him from the fact that Katara is on the other side. But his impatience finally wins out and he knocks; seconds later, a hand shoots out to clasp his wrist and pull him through an impossibly-tiny crack in the door.

Katara doesn’t say a word. Instead, once the door latches, she throws her arms around his neck so forcefully that he has to brace himself against the door.

“It’s been so long,” she murmurs without a trace of her old apprehension.

“Yeah.” He doesn’t know how his heart is holding up right now when it feels so close to bursting, and his arms tighten around her waist. “Too long. I missed you.”

  
She smells like the fire lily perfume she’s taken to wearing, feels like a sigh of relief in his arms. Still, she does not let go of him. “So you said you had plans for us today?”

“Or we could just stay here,” he offers, because the prospect of an entire day spent like this – here, holding her – is looking more appealing by the minute.

“Well, yes, but I’m curious about this plan of yours.” She pulls away and her eyes sparkle. “Sneaking out?”

He can’t help but crack a smile at that. “Sneaking out.”

“Well, we certainly have practice in that area.” She plays with the collar of his tunic, bold in her teasing now that she’s had time to get used to the idea of this – of _them._ “Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll see.” He raises her chin. “But can I get a kiss first?”

Katara’s face lights up and she nods eagerly, but when she raises her head to kiss him, she doesn’t meet his lips, as he’d obviously been asking. Instead, her lips brush the edge of his scar, teasing at a tiny sliver of unblemished skin, and he sighs.

  
“Are you going to make me say it?”

“Of course I’m going to make you say it.” She kisses the center of the scar now.

He sighs once more. “Where I can feel it?”

She is all too happy to oblige.

**_**_ **

“It’s called illuvium.”

Before he continues his explanation, Zuko pauses to make sure that Katara is really listening; she seems to be, though her wide eyes are not on him, so he starts up again. “A few centuries ago, the caldera was flooded. It would fill up every monsoon season, so it was basically a seasonal lake until Fire Lord Taeshin had an series of aqueducts built to drain it so he could build the palace. But you can still see that it was underwater because-“

  
“The walls look like the rings of a tree,” Katara murmurs, the hand that isn’t holding is reaching up to touch the wall. “This…this was underwater?”

They’re standing in the bowl of the caldera, a ways off from the palace where the bands of darker material interspersed with the red rock of the caldera are most clearly visible. “All of it. Crazy, right?”

  
“And it’s called illuvium?”

“Yeah. It’s when one layer of silt gets carried to another, or something like that.”

“So even when the water receded, it left this behind,” Katara muses as she turns back to Zuko. “How did you find this place?”

He shrugs. “When I was really little, no one paid much attention to me, since I wasn’t the heir. You’d be surprised how much I managed to sneak off when I wasn’t in my lessons. It was pretty easy to wander around the caldera as long as I kept track of time well enough to be back when I was supposed to be seen somewhere.”

“Ah, so sneaking around is a _thing_ with you,” she teases. “How fitting.”

Zuko shrugs. “It’s a lot more fun with you.”

“Sap.”

“Never said I wasn’t.”

“Never said I didn’t like it.”

“In that case,” Zuko replies after a necessary moment to collect himself, “I’m glad I got to bring you here.”

Katara smiles, steps an inch closer so she can rest her head against his shoulder. “In that case,” she replies, “I’m glad you talked me into this.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm.”

He wraps his arms around her waist for no reason at all as they take in the view – really, it doesn’t change much the further out they get, but neither really cares – and they’re silent for a moment. It’s Katara who finally breaks it.

“What are the odds that someone has eyes on us right now?”

  
“Everyone’s off of work.”

“Your guards aren’t.”

“They didn’t follow us, though. And most of the palace staff is off today.”

“Your point?”

“Fairly low.”

“Oh, good.” Katara gently pries his hands away from her waist so she can turn; his hands settle at the small of her back and he looks down at her, wondering if he can really be sure that this isn’t a dream.

She’s so lovely that she almost hurts to look at.

“Hm?”

  
“Then there’s no one around to stop me from doing this.”

She doesn’t bother to kiss his scar this time, or to make him ask for a kiss before she steals one; she simply _does,_ and that is enough to let him know how badly she wants this. He threads one hand through her hair (so impossibly _soft –_ he makes a mental note to appreciate that about it more often) and leaves the other against the small of her back, too shy to pull her any closer. This still feels new and a little dangerous, and he’s terrified of overstepping, so he leaves these things to her, and if she chooses to press herself closer to him (which she does), that will have been her call, not his.

But he still winces when she pulls back and informs him that “you kiss me like you’re afraid of me, Zuko.”

“I’m sorry, I-“

She silences him with another kiss, brief and gentle. “No, no, that isn’t a bad thing. I just…” she impulsively takes his right hand and presses it to her chest so he can feel her racing heartbeat. “You seem like you’re afraid you’re going to do something wrong, and I don’t want this to be all about _me._ If _you_ want something, just…tell me. Or, better yet, just do it. Don’t be scared, okay?” she smiles softly up at him. “As much as I love how considerate you are, it would be inconsiderate of _me_ not to realize that you were holding back for my benefit, and I don’t want that.”

  
“I’m…I just…” his heart picks up speed in time with hers. “I’ll try.”

“I know it’s hard for you,” she murmurs, her fingers ghosting his jaw. “But I want you to enjoy this.”

“I am, Katara.”

“I want you to enjoy _me.”_

“I _do.”_

“Okay.” She lets her heavy-lidded eyes flutter closed and tips her chin back up, nose brushing against his before she stops barely a breath away from his lips. “Then kiss me,” she says, and he can feel her lips moving against his own as she speaks, “however you want.”

“However I want?”

  
She nods.

  
And so, gently, bracing her shoulders, holding her as close to him as is physically possible, murmuring half-coherent encouragements between soft but frantic kisses, he does.


	13. Morganatic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara and Zuko discuss where they stand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I *know* that canon Zuko is far too awkward to manage romantic monologues like this, but I like to think that several years of having to make grandiose Fire Lord speeches would take the edge off his awkwardness and start bleeding into his everyday vocabulary. After all, he is a Drama Baby, and I like to think that he'd apply those lessons to his attempts to romance Katara. 
> 
> (This week on Sarah Justifies Questionable Characterization Choices...) 
> 
> I think I like this one. Turns out that deciding to take a hiatus from every writing project that isn't a time-sensitive Christmas gift does wonders.

**_Morganatic_ **

****

**_Noun – of, like, or pertaining to a marriage between those of unequal rank_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

She poses the question on a rainy afternoon, one of the kind so dismal that it’s been a welcome relief to everyone involved to call off a few unimportant meetings. In her chambers, she’s pushed a low velvet settee up to the window – “to listen to the rain,” she’d explained – and they recline together, mostly in silence. Neither of them really intends to get any work done today.

  
It’s a great day for conversation, though, and Zuko can tell that Katara’s been waiting some time for an opportunity like this when she says, “what are we?”

“…people?”

He doesn’t need to see Katara’s face to know that she’s rolling her eyes. “No, Zuko, I mean _us.”_

“I’m still not understanding the question.”

“As a couple,” she clarifies. “Our relationship…what is it?”

“Um, I _think_ we’re dating?”

“You _think?”_

“I don’t exactly know how to classify a secret relationship.”

Katara shrugs. “I mean, that’s fair. But I guess what I really wanted to know was, I don’t know…what your intentions are. Stuff like that.”

“My intentions?” he considers for a moment. “To…spend as much time with you as I can, I guess. To enjoy your company. To…” _love you,_ he almost adds, but he catches himself; he hasn’t said it yet, and he isn’t going to let it be so anticlimactic when he does. “…um, I’m not really sure if that’s what you were looking for, but…yeah.”

“No, no, I knew all of that. I mean, like, in the future,” she says. “Where do you see this going?”

“Well, somewhere, I hope.” He absentmindedly thumbs the divot in the crook of her elbow. “I don’t know how it’s going to look in the future, but I want to be with you for as long as I can.”

“And how long would that be?”

_Forever,_ she hopes he’ll say, but she’s not sure that he will.

“Well, if it were up to me, as long as you wanted to stick around.” He kisses the side of her head. “But I’m not really sure if it _is_ up to me.”

“And would we just keep sneaking around forever?” Katara asks. As much as she loves this – now – she suspects that she can’t carry the guilt of hiding from the world and the constant anxiety that comes with the knowledge that they could be caught at any moment for the rest of her life. There’s a special kind of ache she’s begun to know, one that wishes more than anything that this could be – that _they_ could be – something permanent, something more than a secret.

She has to know if he’s ever going to be able to allow her that.

“I don’t want that,” Zuko admits, and Katara lets out a full-body sigh of relief. His hand stills at her elbow and she knows he’s noticed. “I don’t…I’m serious about this, Katara. Serious about _you._ And I don’t…I don’t want to hide you.”

“I don’t want to be hidden,” she tells him. “I know that this is the only way for now, but I wanted to know if you thought we could ever…” she pauses, forcing herself to comprehend the enormity of what she’s suggesting before she continues. “If you thought we could ever be together openly. _Officially.”_

“Well, that’s what I want,” he replies. “I’m not going to lie and say that it would be easy, but it’s what I would want for us.”

She presses her cheek to his chest and feels her tense muscles relax at its warmth. “So what would it take to make this official?” she flushes at her own wording. “I mean, I’m not suggesting that we get married or anything!” – _great, Katara, way to dig yourself into an even deeper hole –_ “But I need to know what we’re getting into if the goal is going public and-“

“Katara.” His hand on her shoulder stills her. “It’s okay. I knew what you meant.”

She nods against his chest. “Okay.”

“And to answer your question…” he lets out a weary sigh. “A lot of throat-clearing and paperwork.” She can’t help but giggle, and he huffs an exasperated sigh. “Yes, I know, it’s all very amusing-“

“Actual paperwork so we won’t have to keep doing fake paperwork,” she giggles.

  
He pecks the crown of her head. “Essentially, yes. My advisors can’t stop me from choosing my own suitors, but they’re still supposed to be involved in the process of making a courtship official. They probably wouldn’t be happy that I was trying to court someone who worked for me, so they’d resist as much as they could, and we’d just have to wait it out. They can’t stop me from marrying you” – they both freeze at the implication before Zuko clears his throat and begins again – “but they can try to stall me, and they probably will. They’d likely try to make you give up your ambassadorship, which, again, isn’t required, but they would make a fuss about it.”

“I’m not doing that. I came here to do a job and I intend to do it.”

“I would never ask you not to. Just be prepared for a lot of dirty looks and badly-concealed digs.”

“And then?”

Zuko smiles to himself – this is the good part. “Courtships usually last six months. They’re not supposed to be particularly romantic, but then again, most Fire Lords aren’t” – _in love with,_ he wants to say but doesn’t – “with _you.”_

“What are we looking at here? Chaperoned excursions where we drink tea and politely discuss classic literature?” Katara laughs.

“Okay, first of all, some of us _enjoy_ those things.”

Katara cranes her neck to kiss his cheek, though she ends up kissing something nearer to his jaw instead. “And I would love to do that with you, but not with _chaperones._ ”

“They aren’t, usually. Every Council is different, but they usually figure that the guards following the Fire Lord around at all times are enough to keep the couple from doing anything…untoward.” He grimaces. “Not that that ever actually stops them if they’re determined to.”

“Untoward,” Katara repeats. “I like the sound of that.”

“I’m going to choose to ignore that,” he says, paling, because he knows how she loves to get his goat and it’s best not to react too much when she tries. “Anyways. We would have about six months of that before I’d be expected to propose to you.”

“Which I’m sure would be scandalous,” Katara says lightly.

“Extremely, in some circles, and not at all in others. After all, the people love you” – _almost as much as I do,_ he almost says – “and even the Council doesn’t really dislike you. They won’t be happy that I’m courting you, of course, but they’re not dead-set against you.” _Unlike the other ambassadors,_ he doesn’t even have to add. “So yes, there will probably be a little bit of pushback, but nothing too terrible. Then, um.” His cheeks go hot just thinking about what he’s going to say next. “Engagements usually last six months as well.”

“Then we’d get married.”

“I know it’s really premature, but-“

“It really isn’t,” Katara reassures him. “If we’re going to do this, we both need to know as soon as possible where we’re going. If marriage is the end goal, then it’s not too early to know that.”

“I didn’t want to presume that you wanted that, Katara.”

“And, again, that’s very considerate of you, but two things.” She shifts so she can meet his eyes. “One, if it’s the expectation, then I need to know that as soon as possible. And two…”

“Two?” he prompts after she trails off.

Katara bites her lip, a little sheepish and a little mischevious, before she looks back up at him. Her hands drift to the collar of his tunic and, gently, she takes hold of either side. “I am absolutely mad about you, Fire Lord,” she says softly, teasingly. “Offer me forever and I’d me out of my mind not to accept.”

“Forever as in… _forever?”_

“Forever as in forever,” she murmurs, pressing her forehead to his and one hand to his jaw. “If you’re in this for the long haul, Zuko, then so am I.”

  
He nods, his breathing shaky. “Okay.”

  
“And you?”

“I want as much as you’ll give me,” he says, “and I know that it sounds selfish, but I need to be honest. I am…” he takes in a shuddery breath. “You are _everything_ to me, Katara. Anything you’d give me would be…would be all I wanted.”

She caresses the line of his jaw and she knows he can feel her smile against his lips. “Then I’ll give you all I’ve got.” 

He doesn’t say anything after that; instead, he places both hands on her cheeks, then presses his thumbs over her lips. She wonders what he’s doing until he leans in and kisses his thumbs and she promptly realizes what he’s getting at.

“You little tease,” she laughs breathlessly. It’s intoxicating, this newfound confidence of his, and heat blooms in her stomach at the knowledge that _she_ gave it to him. “You’re getting back at me for the scar-kissing, aren’t you?”

“Say it, Katara,” he teases, a thousand miles from the shy earnestness of only a moment ago.

  
She sighs, but her whole body shivers in anticipation. She lays one hand across the back of his neck and presses the other to his cheek, pulling back a few inches so his eyes can focus on her face.

“Kiss me where I can feel it, Zuko,” she says, as low and sultry as she knows how, and narly laughs before she can finish – even she cannot deny that the seductive timbre of her voice sounds ridiculous right now. But he kisses her half-senseless, and she can’t find it in herself to be embarrassed.

“You are everything, Katara,” Zuko repeats when they must break for air, and she wonders how much longer she’ll be able to take this before she crumbles or melts or turns to vapor in his arms. His hands rest at the small of her back, and his eyes are a gold she’s never seen them before – like sunlight on the summer solstice, as hot and sluggish and molten as they are inviting and warm – as he looks into hers. She can barely stand to look at them so she closes hers, rubbing her nose against his in a gesture that would probably seem odd if anyone observed it but seems impossibly right in the moment. Zuko seems to agree, and she relishes every detail of the way he reacts – the needy, breathy whimper he lets out, the way his body seems to go limp against hers except for his hands, which settle at her hips and squeeze ever-so-gently.

Time seems so unimportant right now, when all that matters and all that has ever mattered is _him._

“I love you,” she finds herself murmuring before she can hold herself back, and she’s surprised to find that she is not upset to have given up the game so soon. She’d been planning to hold out, wait for the perfect moment, but it seems hard to imagine a better time for those words than this one.

“Katara,” he murmurs, as he always does when he is too overcome to say anything of substance. His voice seems to have a register entirely reserved for her name, and she has come to love the way it sounds like she loves very few things in life.

  
“It’s okay,” she murmurs, a little disappointed but bearably so. “You don’t have to say it back.”

“No, no, no,” he says, his hands drifting inwards and upwards to her waist. His forehead still rests against hers, but he pulls it back, cradling her face as if his palms hold every treasure imaginable at once. “I…I do. I…” he inhales deeply and, on the exhale, continues. “I love you so much that saying so feels like…like cheapening it, somehow,” he admits, his eyes fluttering shut. “I love you more than any words in any language could possibly express and I hate the idea that…you’d think that three words were all I meant when I mean _everything._ Because,” he repeats, “You _are_ everything. And you _deserve_ everything.”

“I don’t want everything,” she replies, her breath catching. “All I want is _you.”_

“Then have me.”

  
“You,” she replies, close to tears, “are so _stupidly_ romantic that I’m at a loss for words.”

“You seem to be finding them just fine.”

  
“Not the ones I wish I could say,” she admits.

  
“Then we agree that words are pitifully inadequate right now?”

“Pitifully,” Katara agrees, and she kisses him for all that she is worth.

She does not know how to put this into words, this thing far too wonderful to describe, but she makes absolutely sure that he can feel it.


	14. Brontology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara and Zuko come to an important decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is 99% romance and 1% politics at this point, which was not my intention, but as no one seems to mind, that shall be the way of things henceforth. Heh.

**_Brontology_ **

****

**_Noun – the study of thunder_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

“ _Zuko!”_ Katara squeals indignantly, grateful for the peal of thunder that drowns out her voice. “You’re going to get us caught!”

“No one’s going to be paying attention, trust me,” he says lightly as he takes her by the hand and pulls her into a deserted corner behind an oversized tapestry. A meeting of the Council of Ambassadors has just adjourned and the halls are swarming with people; she’s acutely aware of the risk, even if Zuko isn’t.

That doesn’t make it any less deliciously thrilling when he pulls her flush against him, though.

“You sure about that?” she asks.

“Positive,” he replies, leaning down to kiss her.

Katara muffles her laughter against his lips as he threads his fingers through her hair, insensible to the sounds of footsteps and rustling fabric as the palace’s denizens rush past. “You are insatiable,” she teases, poking a finger into his chest. “When did you go from shy and considerate to…this?”

Doubt clouds his face. “Do you…not like it?”

Katara rushes to backtrack. “No, no, I love it!” she reassures him, wincing once again at her insensitive wording. “I’m sorry! I just…it’s new, that’s all.”

“Oh. Right.” He scratches the back of his neck. “Well, it’s been a while since I had a chance to do that, and…” he smirks. “I’m not patient when I don’t have to be.”

“Which is kind of hot,” Katara admits, cheeks pinking.

“Oh?” he smirks again, though the earnest shyness of their early relationship is never quite gone, always present in the undercurrents Katara can feel as well as she can read the emotions he chooses to display. “Good to know.”

“But we have to be careful,” she continues. “No one’s disturbed us yet _now,_ but we never know when someone’s going to stumble upon our hiding place and the whole thing will go up in flames.”

Zuko’s eyes soften. “I know,” he concedes.

“Which is why I’ve been thinking.”

Zuko raises his eyebrows. “About us?”

Katara nods. “So, you still want me to accompany you to that conference in the Earth Kingdom, right?”

Zuko nods. “Of course.”

“And it’s coming up soon.”

“Two weeks, to be exact.”

Katara nods. “Just like I thought.”

“Okay, and your point is…?”

“If you’re okay with it, I think we should wait until the conference is over and then announce our intent to court.” She swallows hard. “Officially.”

“That’s…big,” Zuko says lamely. “Are you sure?”

“Are _you_ sure?”

“I am,” he says, taking her hands and tracing figure-eights across their backs with his thumbs. “But why after the conference?”

Katara smiles sheepishly. “Well, if we do it beforehand, everyone’s going to think that you chose me to come with you for personal reasons.”

Zuko looks down at the floor. “I _did.”_

“We weren’t even together when you asked me!”

“No, but I still wouldn’t have picked a different ambassador.”

“Well, I suppose, but you didn’t make that choice with the intention of taking some sort of romantic getaway with me, did you?”

“Well, no.”

“Exactly. But that’s what everyone is going to think we’re doing if they know we’re a couple before we leave.”

“Okay, fair point,” Zuko concedes. “But you know what they’re going to say if we announce it afterwards, right?”

Katara grimaces. “I can imagine, but we know that none of it is true, right?” it’s a weak defense and she knows it, but it’s the best one she has.

“Well, since we have to do it eventually and it’s probably better for the Council to hear it from us than from the rumor mill, we might as well,” Zuko reluctantly agrees. “I have to warn you to brace yourself, but if you’re ready, I am.”

Katara’s face lights like the sky at dawn. “Really?”

He leans down to kiss her once more. “Of course.” He presses his forehead to hers and, reflexively now, Katara brushes her nose against his. “The Council mandates that you have your family’s written approval of the decision to accept my courtship” – he pauses until the sound of another thundercap recedes, polite to a fault – “but that shouldn’t be much of a problem, since your father is going to be at the conference.”

“Oh, it won’t be.” A teasing smile plays at Katara’s lips. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled, but he’ll run you over the coals before he puts anything in writing.”

“Wait, actually?”

“He loves you, but he knows as well as we do how hard this is going to be,” Katara tells him. “I don’t think he’s going to let us traipse into something like this without at least a shovel talk.”

Zuko looks mildly nauseous.

“But he’s going to say yes, Zuko.” Katara reaches to cup his left cheek and, even though he can’t feel most of her palm against his skin, Zuko leans gratefully into her touch. “Once he sees that I know what I’m getting into and that I’m happy with you, he won’t refuse.”

He smiles and she can feel the corner of his lips twitch against her palm. “I make you happy?”

“You do,” she says, pushing herself up and forwards on her toes to kiss him, soft and quick. “You make me _very_ happy, Zuko.”

“Really.” He sounds almost awestruck and she can’t help but giggle, releasing his cheek so she can wrap both her arms around his waist. “Well, what can I say? I’m honored.”

“It’s just the truth,” Katara tells him. He holds her and she hums contentedly as she lets her full weight relax against his chest. “You make me happier than almost anything, and I can’t wait to be able to admit that.”

“No more sneaking around,” Zuko replies softly.

“No more hiding.”

“No more stealing kisses in dark corners.”

“Ehhh…” Katara raises an eyebrow. “Unless your officials suddenly become okay with flagrant PDA, I think that one’s still going to be a thing.”

“Well, I never really minded,” he chuckles, squeezing her shoulders. “Nevertheless, thank you.”

“For?”

“Taking this risk for me.” He nuzzles his cheek against his hair. “For us.”

“Zuko…” she shakes her head fondly. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.”

“These are the kinds of things we have to do for love,” Katara replies. “Feels like nothing when I think about what I stand to gain.”

“And what would that be?”

“You. All of you, always.”

“And that’s worth all of this hassle and risk?”

“You will always be worth that, Zuko,” Katara murmurs, pulling away and pressing her hand to the center of his chest. “And so much more.”

He pulls her back into his arms and she goes to him readily. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“I could be asking the same question.” Katara pauses and then adds, “when did we become so sappy? It’s really horrifying.”

“You love it.”

“No comment,” Katara huffs. “Now kiss me before I say anything else stupid.”

He, of course, is all too willing to comply.


	15. Innoxious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before the Earth Kingdom conference begins, Zuko and Katara prepare themselves for a shovel talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is not my favorite but y'all requested Sokka messing with our favorite pair of lovebirds, so here ya go.

**_Innoxious_ **

****

**_Adjective – harmless_ **

****

**_**_ **

**_Two Weeks Later_ **

****

**_Ba Sing Se_ **

****

“You’ve got this.” Katara reaches up to brush a strand of Zuko’s hair back behind his ear. “Nothing to worry about, right?”

Zuko catches her hand as it drifts back down to her side and takes it between both of his own; they’re burning-hot, as they always are when he’s too nervous to remember to control his temperature. “You were the one who said he’d ‘run me over the coals.’”

“Yes, but he’s ultimately harmless,” Katara says fondly, taking his arm and half-following, half-dragging him down the halls of the Ba Sing Se hotel where the guests of the fifth annual Conference on the Maintenance of Peacetime Affairs (it’s not a very romantic name, but it is an accurate one, at least) are being lodged. “I think he probably already knows, anyways.”

_“_ Wait, _what?”_

“Zuko, what did you think he was going to assume when he got a letter from you saying that you had, and I quote, ‘a matter of the utmost importance to discuss’?”

“There are plenty of things that could apply to.”

Katara shakes her head. “I think he knew that I liked you before _I_ even did. I’m sure he already knows what’s up.”

“Well, that’s just great. He’s probably had time to mull over which threats to use-“

“No, that would be Sokka’s thing,” Katara says with feigned disinterest, examining her fingernails. “And he’s not here, so you’re good.”

  
Zuko visibly relaxes. “Well, I guess that’s good, then.”

“Besides, I’ll be with you the whole time.” Katara’s voice drops a register. “And you know I’ll step in if I think he’s being too hard on you, right?”

“Okay.” Zuko exhales shakily as they approach the lounge where they’d agreed to meet her father and squeezes Katara’s arm. “Then let’s get this over with.”

**

Zuko’s stomach drops the moment they turn the corner into the lounge and realizes that it is _not_ Hakoda who’s arrived to meet them.

_She said Sokka wasn’t going to be here,_ he can’t help but think in a blind half-panic that he’s sure is visible on his face, and he’s never exactly felt this before, so he isn’t certain, but he’s pretty sure that his life begins to flash before his eyes. Katara, as expected, reacts to her brother’s unexpected presence with far more grace than Zuko does.

“What are you doing here?” she laughs, a little short of breath in his crushing embrace.

“Shadowing Dad,” Sokka replies, finally releasing her with a pat on the back. “And seeing what’s up with this _urgent matter_ I keep hearing about.”

“Uh…I…see.” Now even Katara looks cowed. “Well. It’s good to see you!”

“Been a while.” He takes a good, long look at her and smiles. “You seem happy.”

She nods, flushed and elated. “I _am_ happy. I love my job.” She nudges Zuko’s arm. “And my coworkers aren’t half-bad, either.”

Zuko doesn’t think it’s a prudent time to point out that he’s technically her boss, not her coworker.

“Uh. Hi,” he says, raising his hand in greeting. “This is an…um…a pleasant surprise.”

“You look like I’m going to punt you into the sun,” Sokka comments as he moves in for a quick hug. “You good?”

“I’m, um…yeah. I’m good. You?”

_Someone please end me now._

“Pretty good, pretty good,” he replies. “Dad’s running a little late, so he told me to start off without him. So…” he flops down into a plush green armchair. “Tell me. What’s on your mind?”

“Um, I think we should wait for Dad,” Katara says nervously, taking Zuko’s arm again.

“No, he _specifically_ told me to start without him.”

“But we _specifically_ need _his_ consent to begin an official courtship, _not yours.”_

Katara cannot help but grin at the way he reels back, eyes wide.

“You need his…his _what?_ To _what?”_ Sokka braces himself against the sides of the armchair. “Please tell me I’m hearing things.”

“Not hearing things, Sokka.” Katara nudges Zuko, who’s been frozen where he stands since she began speaking. “Zuko, anything to add?”

There are many things he could and should say. “My Council requires me to get permission from Katara’s family to court her and your dad has to be here for that,” for one; “please don’t stab me, I promise I’ll do right by her” would be another.

But, because Zuko’s brain has _never_ liked him, what he blurts out instead is “Sokka, I’m in love with your sister.”

Katara’s eyes widen, blue against rapidly-reddening cheeks. “What he _means_ to say is that we’ve, um, become…close since I moved to the Fire Nation, and his Council mandates that we have written permission from my family to be…you know…official. So we have to ask for it.” She pauses, then amends, “we have to ask _Dad_ for it.”

Sokka can’t really do anything more than blink at them for a few moments before he finally snaps himself out of it and asks, “so you’re trying to date my baby sister?”

“Well, he kind of already _is_ dating your baby sister,” Katara says under her breath.

Sokka crosses his arms, sizing them up. “Okay, I’m gonna be honest with you, I totally saw that coming,” he says, a little too proud of himself. “But… _what?”_

Zuko’s heartbeat picks up speed and he knows he needs to say _something,_ but somehow, the speech he’d planned to give to Hakoda doesn’t seem quite right anymore. It’s still the best option he has, though, so he clears his throat and begins, “you should know that I am completely aware of the difficulties which might arise as a result of such a courtship, and-“

“I thought we agreed not to do the speech, Zuko,” Katara whispers.

“We did?”

“Well, _I_ thought we did!”

Zuko scratches the back of his neck. “But it was a good speech.”

“Sure.” Katara shrugs. “But I don’t think it’s…appropriate anymore.”

“What, because I’m not important enough?” Sokka looks indignant. “Keep going, Zuko. I wanna hear this.”

“And we are prepared to face at least some degree of opposition to the match once we bring our desire to court to the attention of the council. It’s possible that this will be a difficult experience for both of us, which is why we want to make it clear that we are committed to seeing it through to the end-“

“-whatever obstacles we might encounter along the way,” Katara finishes, patting his arm. “We just wanted you to know how serious we are about each other-“

“Oh, Spirits, this is horrifying,” Sokka interrupts, but Katara pays him little heed.

  
“-before asking anything of you.” She fixes him with her steeliest glare. “Please know that we wouldn’t be coming to you if we weren’t aware of the gravity of this decision and willing to commit to this relationship in spite of it.”

“And…that was the speech.” Zuko shrugs. “If you wanna threaten my life now, go ahead.”

Katara elbows his side.

“Dude. Why would I do that?” Sokka shakes his head. “I mean, yeah, it’s disgusting, and if I have to watch you two make eyes at each other for five more seconds I’m going to lose my lunch, but…why would I threaten you?”

“Because…I don’t know, because you’re her brother,” he offers lamely.

“Nah. If you’re happy and you promise not to make out in front of me-“

“You’re one to talk,” Katara interrupts.

“-then I’m in.” He smirks. “Of course, Dad’s probably going to hit you with the ‘do-you-realize-what-you’re-getting-into’ lecture, but _I_ am a _paragon_ of chillness.” Sokka approaches and thumps Zuko on the back again; Zuko coughs. “And if I hear that she’s not happy, you’ve got three to five business days to live.”

“Ah. There it is. There’s the life-threatening.” Katara rolls her eyes. “Just know that I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think I would be.”

“Would be what?”

Zuko’s stomach drops again at a voice in the doorway and he turns, his good eye wide. “Um, I’m, I’m sorry, sir, we didn’t-“

“Happy,” Katara answers. “If I didn’t think I would be happy.”

It takes Hakoda all of three seconds to realize what she means and he smiles knowingly. “I take it your brother already took care of the shovel talk?”

“In a way,” Katara says coolly.

“Good. Then in that case…” he hands over a scroll and Zuko takes it, shocked speechless. “Let’s just say I’ve been reading up on Fire Nation customs since your letter arrived.”


	16. Demotic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every Zutara fanfiction's requisite festival scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sobs in single Pringle*

**_Demotic_ **

****

**_Adjective – of or pertaining to the common people_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

Zuko can’t seem to get himself to settle even after he turns in on the final night of the convention. It’s hard to sleep with the adrenaline of a negotiation brought to completion still coursing through his veins, and harder still with the din of the Midwinter Festival rising with the moon outside his window. The hotel backs up on a plaza where one of the biggest celebrations is being held, and the noise – music, shrieks of laughter, the joyous rustle of frenzied movement – makes it all but impossible to drift off. He’s not even close to sleep when he hears the knock at his door and, with nothing more than a defeated sigh, he throws off the covers to open it.

  
“Yeah?” he mutters, but he freezes in place when he sees who’s knocked.

“Hey.” Katara laughs softly at his rumpled appearance, one hand absentmindedly fidgeting with the folds of the blue gown she’d worn to the banquet that had followed the close of the negotiations. He can’t help but stare, eyes tracking the movements of her hands against the cerulean of her skirt. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”   
  
“Of course not,” he demurs. “Did you…need something?”

“Oh, um…” Katara bites her lip, casts her eyes to the floor. “Well, since the last night of the conference went so well, as did our…chat with my father…” she smilies intimatingly up at him – “I thought we might want to celebrate.”

His eyes widen. “Celebrate as in…”

“The festival!” Katara finishes eagerly. “It’s right down in the courtyard, and I’ve never been to an Earth Kingdom festival before. I thought it might be…nice to go check it out?”

“Oh. The festival. Of course.” Zuko nods a little too vigorously. “Um…well, if you want to…”

“If you don’t want to go, we don’t have to!” Katara rushes to reassure him, but she can’t fight the disappointment off of her face. “I just thought…maybe it would be fun.”

Zuko’s face softens and he retreats back into his room to grab a coat, ushering her in with him. “What did you want to do, exactly?”

“I’ve been watching from my balcony,” Katara admits shyly, turning to allow him to change into daytime clothes. “And…they’re dancing.”

“You wanted to dance?” Zuko pulls the shoulderpiece of his formal robes – if she’s going to dress to the nines, he thinks he ought to do the same. “You can turn now.”

When she does, her eyes are alight with excitement. “I did,” she says. “When I was watching them, it looked like they were having so much fun. I mean, all of the…” she bites her lip again. “…couples. They seemed happy, and, I don’t know, I thought maybe it would be fun for us to join them?”

“Maybe it would be,” Zuko concedes. There is no earthly way he’s going to be able to deny her anything now, when she’s looking at him with such palpable excitement.

“Zuko, we had such a successful week,” she presses, apparently not convinced that she’s convinced him. “With…the negotiations, and my family’s approving our courtship, and…I don’t know.” She smiles up at him tentatively. “Tonight, I just want to be a girl dancing with the boy she loves.”

“Katara, I already said ‘yes.’”

She’s all but running when she grabs his hand and pulls him down the hallway, her free hand muffling her laughter so as not to disturb those sleeping in the surrounding rooms.

******

“Um, Katara?”

“Yes?”

Zuko scans the gathered crowds anxiously from the edge of the plaza, the weight of Katara’s hand on his arm a sole comfort in the dizzying unfamiliarity of the festival. “What do we do now?”

“We join them,” she replies, her lip quirking up as she leads him to the center of the plaza. Though a light dusting of snow is beginning to coat the ground, the music is high as ever, and the dancers revel.

“But-“

“It’s no different than any Fire Nation festival,” she argues. “C’mon, Zuko. No titles, no appearances. Just…a boy and a girl at a festival.”

He’s not quite sure how to do that – to _be_ that – but Katara’s excitement is buoyant enough for them both, and though he does not know the steps to the dance that’s playing, he lets himself _try._ Katara’s a quick study, picking up the steps after only a few moments of stumbling, and soon her laugh is ringing out in the biting chill of the night air, high and clear as a bell. Zuko takes a moment longer to find his footing, trying not to curse under his breath whenever he steps on her satin-shod feet, but…

He does.

He does, and when he finally stops looking at Katara’s feet and glances up to her face, her smile is the kind that leaves him reeling, feeling half-drunk. Her hair is coming loose, and a stray curl slaps him every few moments as she twirls and dips and ducks under his arm. Her cheeks and lips are red with the cold of the air and the exertion of dancing and the joy of the moment, and it all but stops Zuko in his step.

_This woman,_ he decides, _is magic._

The thought makes him smile the way he’d never allow himself to back at home. _This woman is magic,_ he repeats to himself, _and she chose_ me. It’s an almost unbelievable thought: _she chose me. She’s willing to risk censure and criticsm for_ me. _She could love anyone in the world, and she loves_ me.

“Katara?”

She stops at the sound of his voice and her smile diminishes, falling off into a look of breathless tenderness – lips slightly parted, eyes wide, lashes batting away the falling snowflakes. “Yes?” she asks, her breath a cloud of white in the frigid air. The festival-goers dance on around them, unbothered; they are a pocket of immobility in a sea of movement.

“Thank you,” he tells her, brushing a snow-dusted lock of hair back behind her ear. His hand lingers against her cheek, freezing even as it blushes.

“For what?” she asks, her smile fighting to return. She bites her lip as if to keep it away and her hand drifts down from his shoulder, where it had rested as they danced, to the crook of his elbow.

  
“This. Tonight.” He gestures around them. “ _You._ Choosing me. Loving me. _Everything.”_

“You don’t have to thank me for that, Zuko,” Katara murmurs. Now her hand lifts to his chest and she presses it gently against the spot where his starburst scar rests beneath his robes.

“Yes,” he says, taking her hand from his chest and circling his hand around her wrist, then reaching down to do the same with her right hand. He kisses the knuckles of each and looks up just briefly enough to catch the shy smile that flits across her face at the gesture. “I do.”

“If you insist,” she murmurs, rising to her toes to kiss him.

Snow swirls to a crescendo along with the music and the dancers, but, in the center of it all, Zuko and Katara remain unmoved.


	17. Incendivity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in the Fire Nation, Zuko and Katara endeavor to make their relationship official.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At least this one's got a little bit of the politics that the title implies this story will contain? Anyways. I'm getting rid of the planned "snowed in in a tiny Earth Kingdom town" subplot to give more time to things with actual plot relevance, like, y'know, Zuko and Katara's attempts to get the Council to make their PDA legal. That'll be the focus of the next few chapters.

**_Incendivity_ **

****

**_Adjective – the power of causing ignition_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

Zuko has to take this one alone.

Under most circumstances, Katara is hardly the type to sit around wringing her hands, waiting helplessly for her lover to reappear bearing news. She’s a doer – she favors actionable promises, concrete plans – and she knows by now not to expect anyone else to be doing the promising or the planning or the doing. But right now, there’s nothing she _can_ do but sift through paperwork ( _real_ paperwork, sadly) and pretend, when maids come in to dust or guards poke their heads through her office door to ensure that she’s still alive in there, to be getting something done.

She couldn’t dream of it when Zuko is addressing his Council right now on the topic of, well… _her._

This is, to put it lightly, the moment that will set the probable rest of their lives into motion. If the Council is swayed, they will be free to court, engaged in six months, and married in another six; she will be his queen, his partner, an angel on his shoulder who – annoyingly – cannot be easily removed from power. (Or perhaps not such an angel. It really does depend on the context.) If the Council is not, Katara would rather not think about what must inevitably follow. (She can only hope that Zuko is too stubborn or too infatuated or both not to wear them down.)

So, when Katara tries to force her eyes to read the words that float meaninglessly in front of them on the scroll, she has little success. They have her family’s consent (Sokka, apparently, had insisted that his name be on that scroll, which she’d never admit warms her heart the way it does), they have arguments prepared, and they have their own dogged determination to see this out – they _should_ be able to make a case for themselves.

But Katara still gnaws her lip nervously, because protocol dictates that the Fire Lord’s beloved cannot be present for the announcement of intent, and without the Council’s notoriously-difficult “yes,” none of that is going to mean anything.

**

“…in light of those political benefits, and my personal fondness for the Intended, I intend to present a formal offer of suitorship to Ambassador Katara of the Southern Water Tribe.”

Deathly silence falls over the table where Zuko’s Council meets. It’s a moment of calm before what he knows will be a storm, and he braces himself for the inevitable impact when they have had enough time to digest what he’s saying.

Councilman Yi, one of his most ornery, is first to cut in. “Lord Zuko, do you realize what you are proposing?”

He raises an eyebrow and replies, dryly, “marriage? To the Southern Water Tribe ambassador? Yes, I was aware.”

Councilman Jang is next to object. “Do you realize what you are _implying?”_

“No, please enlighten me,” he sighs, leaning forwards into palms flattened on the table. “What _am_ I implying, exactly?”

  
He’s quite proud of that. He didn’t used to be half so glib with his Council; it had terrified him. Now it takes nothing at all to raise a questioning eyebrow and a droll question when they’re being infuriating.

“Favoritism,” Councilman Jang spits. “It explains _everything._ Ambassador Katara’s…influence over you; the favorable positions you have _always_ given her, snubbing senior and far more qualified ambassadors in the process; your choosing her to accompany you to the Conference on the Maintenance of Peacetime Affairs – no wonder!”

  
Councilwoman Kiokou, almost always passive to the point of utter inactivity, speaks up. “These haven’t been the decisions of a Fire Lord concerned for the well-being of his court, Your Majesty. You have just given us incontrivertible proof of what we’ve long suspected,” she says, her tone so flat it’s almost impressive. “That these were the decisions of a deluded twenty-year-old boy so in love that he can’t think straight.”

“I’m plenty deluded, Councilwoman, but not about this.” Zuko has to rein in his smirk, because he just _knows_ that Kiokou is missing the days when he was sixteen and almost too awkward to speak right now. “I’ve laid out all of the ways that this match is politically and socially beneficial. Do I also love her? Of course I do. But I can’t understand why _that’s_ your concern when I’ve addressed every valid concern I thought you might raise.”

“How is the choice of a Southern Water Tribe bride going to be recieved by the governments of the other nations?” a councilman challenges.

“There’s a clear solution to that,” a second cuts in. “Lord Zuko must simply take a wife from each nation. It’s not unheard-of for Fire Lords to-“

“I will not be forming a harem, Councilman Hsu,” Zuko says, not bothering to conceal his exasperation.

“It’s a perfectly reasonable solution to a perfectly reasonable problem!” Councilman Hsu protests.

“Frankly, given that most people would expect me to marry a Fire National, I don’t think anyone in the Earth Kingdom or the Northern Water Tribe is going to be upset if my wife happens to come from the Southern Water Tribe.” Zuko pauses to push his falling hairpiece firmly back into his topknot. “No harem necessary.”

“Okay, then what about popular opinion within our borders?”

“The people love Ambassador Katara more than they ever would a nameless Fire Nation aristocrat,” Zuko offers. He and Katara have spent far too many hours going through every imaginable counterargument (never mind that his answer to half of them was to kiss her into silence) not to know exactly what to say to this – they left nothing up to chance. “She’s made a name for herself as their tireless advocate and they _know_ that. They know _her._ Frankly, it’s _your_ opinion” – the fact that most of his Councilpeople are the ‘nameless Fire Nation aristocrats’ he’d subtly derided a few sentences ago is lost on no one – “that I’m worried about.”

Councilman Ngam, their de facto leader, clears his throat barely a second after Zuko is finished speaking. “Consider your points considered, Lord Zuko,” he says coolly. “We will reconvene tomorrow morning to give you our final decision.”

**

Katara is on her feet nearly as soon as Zuko opens her office door. “Yes or no?” she asks, nervousness palpable.

  
Zuko crosses the room to her, sets one hand at her waist and the other at her jaw. “Maybe,” he says, his left hand cradling her cheek. “It’s a maybe.”

  
“Maybe is good, right?”

“Maybe is better than I expected,” he says, lifting her face an inch to press his lips to her forehead. “So yes. Maybe is good.”

She briefly pushes herself up on her toes to kiss him. “When will we know?”

He leans down to kiss her, briefly, again. “Tomorrow morning.”

“Twelve hours, right?”

“Twelve unbearable hours,” Zuko huffs.

Patience is not a virtue with which he has ever been blessed and he can tell, watching Katara, that she doesn’t know how she’s going to stand the wait, either.


	18. Fissility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twelve hours - that might be all they have left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE on the ages in this story: it's aged-up by two years, so Katara was sixteen and Zuko eighteen at the end of the war. Two years had passed when Katara became an ambassador and it's now been a year since then, so she's nineteen and Zuko is twenty-one. 
> 
> Also, this is very long and fully intended to Break You.

**_Fissility_ **

****

**_Noun – the ability to be split_ **

****

**_**_ **

**_Seven_ **

Katara can’t bring herself to eat. She’s chosen to take dinner alone in her rooms – away from Zuko, because if the Council isn’t going to give its blessing, she might as well get used to this – but she can’t eat any of it. Everything she tries to eat, even the sea prunes the kitchen staff have been stocking since she arrived, turns her stomach. She’s convinced by the way that it tastes when she isn’t hungry that food always knows when it is not wanted, and tonight, her sea prunes recieve the message loud and clear: they’re bitter and gummy and they taste as if they’ve been pickled for far too long by someone who doesn’t really know how. She pushes them to the side after a few bites and lies back against her pillows, dejected.

It could be just under twelve hours before she sees her chances dashed. Everything she’s built with Zuko will necessarily come unraveled if the Council forbids their seeing each other, and if that goes, she’s fairly certain that she can say goodbye to her ambassadorship, too. They’ll never let her stay on when it’s so obvious to them that the only reason she was ever appointed was because the Fire Lord had a thing for her.

  
(It is vital, she’s discovered, to remind herself, over and over, that she deserves this opportunity entirely on the basis of her own merit, because no one else save Zuko seems to think she does.)

In twelve hours, she could lose all of the things keeping her here. In thirteen, she could be on a ship to the South Pole without so much as a kiss goodbye.

She tries not to think about it, but it’s futile.

**

**_Eight_ **

****

Zuko cannot stand the idea of being parted from Katara right now. If they’re to have twelve hours left together, he is unwilling to waste so much as a second. He’s smart enough to know that she’s avoiding him, but, in the mulish stubbornness he’s become known for, he refuses not to try to see her anyways. Never mind the pitying looks he gets from the staff passing by as he frantically knocks at Katara’s door to no avail – he’s going to do everything in his power to spend as much as he can of this last night with her. 

She’s crying when she opens the door. Not red-faced as if she _has_ been, or teary-eyed because she _will_ be – her face bears the trails of tears, fresh ones tracking down her face all the while.

  
He’s seen her cry – cry over _him –_ but never like this. And as much as he prides himself on the strides he’s made in eloquence since his coronation, Zuko finds himself staring across the threshold at Katara without any words at all.

“We shouldn’t see each other,” Katara says hoarsely when she’s finally had enough of standing and staring.

“But…why?”

He’s reminded of an odd old wedding tradition he’s heard of, one dictating that the bride and groom can’t see each other before the ceremony. Her words seem cruelly ironic in light of that thought.

  
“If they’re going to split us up, we might as well get practice being apart now,” she says, and that’s all she can get out before she bursts into tears again and his feet move of their own accord to approach her. For all her conviction of the merits of staying apart, she buries herself in his arms as easily as she ever has.

It’s a long time before she manages to speak again.

**

**_Nine_ **

****

“They’ll send me home and that will be that.” Katara shrugs helplessly, moving an inch further away from Zuko. “No more ambassadorship, and everyone will think that I failed. I might never marry, or I’ll find some nice, boring Water Tribe boy who couldn’t possibly understand me and accept his offer because everone expects it. I’ll cook for him, and warm his bed, and listen to his stories without any of my own to tell, and bear him child after child because that’s what I’m supposed to do. I won’t grow like that, but no one will notice me enough to care.” Apparently she’s more of a glutton for punishment than she thought she was, because she adds, “maybe you’ll come down sometimes on…I don’t know, diplomatic visits. And maybe I’ll get a glimpse of you across a crowded room and wonder what this miserable life I’m living would’ve been like if I’d been able to spend it with you.”

Zuko doesn’t speak for a moment but when he does, it’s from the other side of the bed, face turned away.

“You can be happy without me, Katara,” he says, sounding more defeated than she has ever heard him. “I honestly believe that.”

“What if I don’t _want_ to be?”

He turns his face to look at her, and his eyes are like amber again for the first time since that night in the alcove. “Tell me you don’t mean that, Katara. Tell me that’s something you’re just saying in the heat of the moment and don’t mean.”

“It’s not.” She brushes a stray tear away with the heel of her hand. “I just don’t think I could ever be satisfied with another life, knowing that I could’ve had one with you-“

“But would you _want_ to?” he presses.

“I don’t know.” Katara balls her fists in the fabric of her comforter. “Certainly not in marriage.”

“You don’t have to get married just because it’s expected, Katara.” Zuko shifts to fluff the pillows and then flops back down against them. “You have a choice that I never will.”

“Which is what?”

He shrugs. “Singleness. Changing your mind about the path your life is going to take, hiding from the world, leaving the place that reminds you of me.”

Katara has no adequate reply to that, so she makes none.

**

**_Ten_ **

****

He doesn’t speak again for a good fifteen minutes. Wallowing in silence five feet apart wasn’t the way he’d imagined spending what could well be his last night with Katara, but there doesn’t seem to be another way. Much as he longs to touch her, he does not think she would allow it tonight.

“When you were describing what you thought your life would be like if they said no,” he starts. “Do you really think…?”

“There’s a good chance.” Katara’s voice sounds impossibly small.

“I want to say that that shocks me,” Zuko sighs. “But I can’t.”

“Because you’d end up the same way?”

  
He nods miserably. “I have to have heirs. Staying single isn’t an option.”

“Do you have to be married?”

He nods. “If I want them to be recognized as legitimate heirs, I do.” He adds, after a beat, “probably. And I…I don’t really _want_ to just…sleep around until I get heirs.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

  
“It’s not going to be easy,” Zuko continues.

“I’m aware.”

“I’ll probably have to pick someone as proper as they come, which means-“

“Dull?”

“Exactly. Agni knows I’m not going to love her, but I’ll be married to her anyways, because what else is there to do, right? And within a month of the wedding, the Council will be pestering us for heirs. I’d probably try to delay the inevitable, but there’s really only one thing to be done.” He swallows hard, closing his eyes so he won’t have to look at her. “I’ll have to make love to a woman who isn’t you.”

“ _That’s_ your sticking point?”

  
When he finally looks up at her, he doesn’t speak – he doesn’t trust his voice right now. He nods tightly, and Katara’s eyes drift around the room towards anything but him.

“I didn’t even think you wanted that with me,” Katara says softly. “Seeing as we’ve never-“

“Because it didn’t seem right to,” he says, “when our whole relationship had to be kept secret. I…I couldn’t risk that.”

_And because I knew that if I crossed that line, I’d never be able to let you go,_ he adds in his head.

“But it’s not a secret anymore.” Katara’s eyes are wide now, and there’s a light in them that wasn’t there before. “And we’re alone, and all we have is time.”

He’d have to be denser than he is not to get the implication.

“We _can’t,_ Katara.”

“But _why?”_

“Katara, what’s going to happen if we…go all the way and they break us up?”

“We’ll have something to remember this by,” she says stubbornly.

“Or we’ll just be even more miserable.”

“Can’t we just take what happiness we can before our time runs out?”

“Not if it would just make things harder down the line.” It almost hurts him to turn his head to look at her. “Weren’t you the one who tried not to see me at all tonight because of that?”

Katara releases her clasped hands into her lap with a beleaguered sigh. “Right. Forget I asked.”

“It’s okay, Katara. I wish I could.” He finally reaches over to rest his hand against her forearm. “I…you have no _idea_ how much.”

“But you still won’t.”

“No.”

He hates to deny her anything, but he knows that if that is his last memory of her, it will never leave him. And memory is far too dangerous a thing to be trifled with.

Better not to give himself more to miss.

**

**_Eleven_ **

It takes another hour for the gap between Zuko and Katara to close but the moment it does, she finds herself crying and cursing herself for it yet again. Pulled to him by some magnetism she desperately wishes she had never discovered, Katara slumps into his arms, too weary for anything more. She breathes in the familiar scent of his nightclothes, and wonders if it would be too audacious to ask him to send a piece of his clothing with her if she’s sent away so that she will always have him near.

“They could say yes,” Zuko says, stroking her matted curls. “They could say yes and none of this would ever even matter.”

Katara is far too practical to get her hopes up, but she can’t help but latch onto the possibility. She’s too far gone to feign pragmatism now. “What would life be like if they did?”

  
Zuko’s hand freezes mid-stroke over the nape of her neck for a moment in evident shock. “Well, I would court you for six months,” he starts. “It wouldn’t be much different than what we’ve been doing, only…not a secret. We already know that we want to stay together, but we need to convince the Council that we’re sure of that, so we’ll just keep spending time together.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It does, doesn’t it.” He brushes her hair away from her face so his fingertips brush her tear-stained cheek. “Then, after six months, I’d propose to you. It’d be more of a formality than anything, and usually there would be little more to it than paperwork” – he stops for a moment at that word – “but it’s _you,_ and I’d try to make it…memorable. You deserve that much. I’m not sure if you’d want a betrothal necklace-“

“I don’t want to replace my mother’s.”

“Then how would you feel about a knife?” Zuko can’t help but chuckle. “That’s what we do in the Fire Nation. You exchange a pair of daggers, but, like… _fancy_ daggers.”

“I would love a knife.” Katara manages a watery chuckle. “Seems a bit macabre to start a marriage with an exchange of weapons, but it’s practical. I like it.”

“Then knives it is,” he decides. “After all of that, we’d spend six months planning the wedding, and then…that would be that.”

Katara shifts so she looks up at him, her head resting in his lap. “And after?”

“Well, we’d, um…probably have a honeymoon.”

“Where?”

“Ember Island is traditional, but I’d let you pick.”

Katara smiles wanly. “And what would that be like?”

“You’re doing the thing again, Katara.”

“What thing?” she asks, mock-innocently.

“The thing where you try to get me to talk about things that you know will get me all flustered because you think my discomfort is amusing.”

“It _is,_ though.”  
  
“Well, in that case, I’m going to let you fill in the blanks on that one,” he sighs. “We’d return home after that as Fire Lord and Lady, and…well, there would probably be a lot of meetings and paperwork.” He’s willing to indulge her both literally and metaphorically, so he adds, “both literal and figurative paperwork.”

“And how long will it be before they start asking us for babies?”

“Oh, almost no time at all, but we wouldn’t have them until you wanted them.”

“You’re lucky that I _do_ want them, then.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is anyway. “You do?”

She nods. “I’ve always wanted a big family.”

“Really?”

“Especially if I got to have one with you.”

Zuko has never really thought about fatherhood – it seems entirely too terrifying to consider most of the time – but he has to admit that, the way Katara describes it, raising a gaggle of children doesn’t sound awful.

“Things wouldn’t be easy,” he says after a moment. “But it would be worth it.”

“It would be,” Katara agrees.

  
It’s the unspoken ending of that sentence that matters most, though.

_It would be, if only we could have it._

******

**_Twelve_ **

****

“Zuko?”

The candle on Katara’s bedside table is so close to burning out that it barely gives Zuko enough light to see her by, so he raises his palm – the one opposite her, so he won’t risk singeing her while she can’t see him in the dark – and conjures up enough flame to illuminate her face. “Yeah?”

“Tell me, honestly, whether you think we have a chance.”

“Well, they haven’t said no yet, so we do, technically.”

“But how good is that chance?” Katara plays with the seam of the comforter just to let out the nervous energy he can see building up behind her resigned expression.

“Well, I have twelve people on my Council, and five have already said that they aren’t in favor. The decision is made by majority vote, so I would need all seven people who didn’t actively oppose the idea to vote in favor to get their consent.”

****

“Spirits, that’s close,” Katara mutters under her breath. “And what do you think they’re going to say?”

“Well, I know of four who I’m almost positive will vote in favor.” He doesn’t say it, but he’s been running the numbers on his odds of getting the required permission since they’d made the decision to go public. “I could see the other three voting either way and I just won’t know until the meeting.”

“And what if there’s a tie?” Katara presses. “If six vote yes and six vote no?”

“There’s a procedure for that.”

Katara shakes her head. “Of course there is.”

  
“What can I say? Us Fire Nationals like our protocol.” Katara laughs at that, because Zuko _hates_ protocal and she’s always found that a little ironic in light of his nation’s fondness for it. “Basically, the Council votes in order of importance and seniority, and the Head Councilman is the last to vote. By the time the vote reaches him, we’ll already know if there’s going to be a tie, so his vote is still the deciding one. Regardless of the actual number of votes, whichever side he casts his vote for wins.”

“And how likely is he to vote in favor?”

Zuko shrugs. “I’m honestly not sure. He’s almost impossible to get a read on and he didn’t express an opinion at the meeting.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to his vote, then,” Katara replies.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

**_**_ **

**_One_ **

****

Katara has always been the later sleeper and the later riser of the two of them, but she drifts off first tonight. Zuko can’t blame her – she’s probably close to dehydrated after so many hours of crying, and exhausted after so many hours of worrying – but his heart sinks when he realizes that she’s drifted off.

Now that she’s sleeping, he’s alone with his thoughts, and that is just about his least favorite place to be.

At first, he leaves the flame in his palm lit so that it casts its light across her sleeping face. All of the creases of worry that line her face during the day are ironed out in sleep, and she looks almost as young now, at nineteen, as she did when they first met. But he doesn’t want to disturb her, and eventually he extinguishes it and swings his half-asleep legs down from the bed to leave. He can’t exactly pinpoint why, but it feels wrong to stay here any longer – like he’d be intruding on something that isn’t his to experience yet – and he doesn’t think the Council would be any more likely to vote in his favor if they heard that he’d fallen asleep with the woman he’s trying to convince them to let him marry.

But he cannot resist the urge to brush her hair from her eyes and kiss her forehead before he goes.

“Love you,” he murmurs, close enough to her face that his breath ghosts her skin and she stirs, letting out a dissatisified noise at the disruption to her sleep that has Zuko’s stomach in knots. (He had never, before all of this, thought that fondness could feel so _strange.)_

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if the Council votes “no,” or how he’s going to be able to sleep when he doesn’t know what they’ll decide. But he’d rather not be utterly zombified when he appears before them again tomorrow morning ( _wait, no,_ today _morning,_ he thinks blearily once he remembers that it’s well past midnight now), so he has to try.

He doubts he’s slept three hours when he wakes again, but it is something.

****

**_**_ **

**_Seven_ **

****

Zuko has barely slept, but he’s on high alert as Councilman Ngam calls his subordinates to order. “We will begin with Councilman Yi,” he says, and Zuko has to hold back a defeated sigh – of _course_ he goes straight to the first person who’d spoken against him in the last meeting. “What is your vote?”

“Negative, Your Grace.”

Councilman Ngam nods, unsurprised. “Councilwoman Tiong?”

“Affirmative, Your Grace.” Councilwoman Tiong – possibly the youngest of the Councilpeople, though she outranks Councilman Yi on account of her family’s importance – makes sure to look directly at Zuko as she votes, as if lending silent support. He’s grateful for it, as much as awkward as it is to hold such prolonged eye contact across a room.

“Councilman Qin?”

“Affirmative, Your Grace.”

“Councilman Jang?”

“Negative, Your Grace.”

“Councilman Ko?”

“Negative, Your Grace.”

“Councilwoman Ma?”

“Affirmative, Your Grace.”

_Tied again._ Zuko isn’t sure whether to be relieved or worried that this is shaping up to be such a close vote.

“Councilman Lee?”

“Affirmative, Your Grace.”

“Councilwoman Kiokou?”

“Negative, Your Grace.”

“Councilman Fan?”

“Negative, Your Grace.”

“Councilwoman Ahn?”

“Negative, Your Grace.”

They’re down to the last two votes, one of which is Ngam’s, and this could go either way: either he votes Negative and, with seven votes, they have a rightful majority; or he votes Affirmative and, as the deciding voter, he ties the vote and turns it in favor of the match.

“Councilman Khoo?”

“Affirmative, Your Grace.”

_Of course they’re going to tie. Of_ course. Zuko’s hands clench so tightly around the edge of the table that his knuckles are white.

Councilman Ngam looks down at a parchment he’s been using to tally votes. “That makes…six negative votes and five affirmative votes,” he announces. “Given that my vote is Affirmative, the Fire Lord may move forwards in his relationship with Ambassador Katara with the Council’s consent.”

Zuko could faint with relief.  
  


“…on one condition.”


	19. Desideratum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko and Katara are free to begin their official relationship - sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all over the place and I hate it but here ya go. Cliffhanger resolved.

**_Desideratum_ **

****

**_Noun – something that is needed or wanted_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

“Three _years?”_

Zuko collapses into a stiff leather chair as if every ounce of strength has been sapped from his body. “Three years,” he repeats. “That was their condition. We wait three years to marry or they won’t sign off.”

Katara knows she should be grateful that they haven’t been given an outright “no,” but she can’t bring herself to. “That seems like forever,” she sighs.

“I know.” Zuko runs a hand through his hair. “Believe me, I know.”

“Why do we have to go along with it? Can’t you override them?”

“Well, yes, I _could,_ but it isn’t that simple.” He shrugs. “Not everything that I _could_ do is politically advisable.”

“Because…?”

“Because I need the Council’s political backing to get anything done. I can’t afford to offend them when I’m already kind of…” he winces. “…unpopular. People are still mad that I’m not my father, apparently” – _all the more reason that I can’t make the decision to override my council when that’s what he would’ve done,_ he doesn’t add – “and the world is a mess. I’m not going to risk an uprising because I didn’t listen to my Council.”

In the most selfish and immature depths of her mind, Katara _wants_ to believe that this unwillingness to risk throwing his country into turmoil for her is some mark of disloyalty on Zuko’s part. But reason wins as it always does. “I guess. It just…” she sighs helplessly. “That’s so _long.”_

“I don’t like it either, but…at least we’ll be able to be together in the meantime, right? No more sneaking around?”

“Yeah. There’s always that.”

“Oh, also. There’s another reason that I feel like we need to honor their wishes,” Zuko adds after a beat.

“Oh?”

“Your transition into public life.” Zuko catches her eyes even though she’s pointedly trying not to look at him. “You’re obviously well-known already, but…there are going to be a lot more eyes on you once people find out that we’re together, and not all of them are going to like what they see.”

  
“Gee, thanks.”

  
“I mean, they _should,_ but people are idiots and some of them inevitably _won’t,”_ Zuko amends. “I can’t just throw you to the wolves, and that means I need to know before I go forwards that at least a good amount of the most influential people are okay with it.”

“Because they’d make my life hell if I was courting you against their wishes?”

“Pretty much. I couldn’t do that to you.” He closes his eyes for a moment as he takes a deep breath. “Even if you asked it of me.”

“Then I won’t.” She looks at the floor. “Ask it, I mean. I get it. You know how the Fire Nation government works, I don’t.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Both of them would be hard-pressed not to admit that Katara’s become a canny politican since her ambassadorship began, and she’s had to do her research on the inner workings of the Fire Nation’s government to do it.

“Okay, fine. I’m not as well-versed in _court etiquette_ as you are.”

“Anyways. I just want to make this easy for you and hopefully avoid making the Council want to oust me and…yeah, I _know_ it’s not great, but I think that means that we just have to wait.” He looks back up at her. “Unless…you don’t want to-“

“We haven’t come this far to quit now, Zuko.” The determination he’s come to know and love lights in her eyes again as she grasps his wrists. “I can wait if it means _someday.”_

Zuko smiles to himself, then raises one of her hands to his lips and kisses her knuckles. “And I don’t think the part before _someday_ is going to be so bad, either.”

Katara laughs and takes hold of his wrist again when he releases her hand, pressing it to her cheek and nuzzling against his palm when he opens it to her. “When did you get so _reasonable?”_

“My, how the tables turn,” he says drily. “Never thought I’d be the voice of reason in this relationship.”

“Well, I am quite unreasonable sometimes,” she replies, and he knows by the light in her eyes that she’s started to get far enough past _three years_ to realize that, in a roundabout way, this means _forever._

It’s a point Zuko reached shortly after the meeting and it is, he knows, the only reason he’s able to talk about their required waiting period so easily. He has more cause for joy than sorrow when he thinks of what those three years are going to look like, and even more when he thinks of all the ones to follow them.

“That you are.” He laughs when Katara, who’s been kneeling next to his armchair, finds her way into his lap and presses her forehead to his. “But I happen to like that.”

  
“Good, because you’re not getting rid of me anytime soon.”

“Does it look like I want to?” Zuko teases, ducking his fingers under Katara’s chin and raising it so he can kiss her nose. It scrunches at the tip, as it always does when he kisses it (he’s loath to admit that it’s half of the reason he does that).

  
“Fair point,” she laughs. “I can’t believe our arguments actually kind of _worked.”_

“Not ‘kind of.’ They actually _did_ work.” He pauses. “With…caveats.”

“I think that counts as ‘kind of.’” Katara stands only to sit again seconds later, this time on the armrest of Zuko’s chair. “So…partial victory. But still.” She nudges his shoulder. “We make a good team.”

  
“We do,” he agrees.

“Makes me feel a little bit better about the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing,” Katara chuckles. “At least I have you to not know what I’m doing with.”

“You really think that I know what I’m doing any more than you do?” Zuko raises his eyebrows. “Half the time I don’t even know what words are.”

“Eh. Words are overrated anyway.”

“Not when you need them, they aren’t.”

“Who needs ‘em, though?”

He knows her well enough by now to know when there's meaning lurking beneath her words, even when he has no idea what it is; he can see that look in her eyes right now. “I'm really not following.”

“That was my roundabout way of implying that you should do that thing where you kiss me to shut me up.”

“…you had to have realized that I was never going to get that.”

  
“It was worth a shot…?”

“Well, if we have three stupid years of waiting ahead of us, we might as well make the most of it,” he sighs, and Katara leans in obligingly. She laughs more than she kisses him, frantically anchoring herself against the chair's side with her legs so she won't tumble from the ledge she's precariously perched upon and into his lap (not that either of them would mind), and she's still laughing when he gives up on trying to kiss her and simply presses her forehead to his. 

"No more hiding," he says, his thumb stroking the line of her jaw. 

"No more hiding," Katara repeats, and even with his eyes closed he can see the smile spreading across her face. 


	20. Rede

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Councilman Ngam explains himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this headcanon that Zuko is so careless about protocol - both because he’s stressed and distracted, and because a lot of it carries over from the more authoritarian chapter of the FN’s history that he’s trying to move past - that a lot of it is kind of starting to fall away. You see a lot of that here.
> 
> Also, @ everyone who liked the three years stipulation in the last chapter: this one’s for you.

**_Rede_ **

****

**_Noun (archaic) – counsel, advice_ **

****

**_**_ **

“You asked to see me?”

Councilman Ngam presses his palm to his fist and vows at the neck. “I did, Lord Zuko.”

Zuko has to resist the urge to raise his eyebrows but beckons the Councilman into his office anyways. “What about?”

Of the insufferable windbags on his Council, this has to be one of the easiest to tolerate; he still has no particular fondness for the man, though, and certainly not the kind that would make visits like these a regular occurrence. To say that this is a bit unusual would be an understatement.

“About the matter of your marriage,” he starts, and adds, “don’t worry, all good thibgs,” at the panic that crosses Zuko’s face. “I certainly don’t intend to go back on my word. I just felt that I owed you an explanation of my choice.”

“You mean the voice to make us wait three years to marry?” It takes a concerted effort not to sound as bitter as he feels. “I think I have a fairly clear idea of why you did that.”

“May I be so bold as to ask what that idea is?” Councilman Ngam asks. Zuko is a little surprised at the almost grandfatherly affection in his voice - he’s never come off so paternally before – but doesn’t mention it.

“I’m assuming that it’s likely a political move, to let the country get used to the idea of Katara as Fire Lady – smooth over opposition, that sort of thing?”

“Well, that’s certainly part of it. It’s always astute not to startle the court – you know how they get.”

“Which is the only reason I’m going along with this.” Zuko hates to agree but can’t deny that he does. “I don’t intend to throw her to the wolves.”

“Which is certainly a consideration. But there are others – more personal ones.” Ngam smiles knowingly. “Do you know what my first impression of the Ambassador was?”

“I have no idea, no.”

“It was at that tariff meeting,” Ngam chuckles – again, surprising, as Zuko has never seen his Council Head so at ease. “I saw her break up an argument between Lao and Ataraq that I’m fairly certain every other politician in this country would stay miles away from almost without effort. And _win.”_

“Oh, that was your first meeting?” Zuko bites his lip, trying not to smile. “That was something.”

“And she was _eighteen_ at the time. Eighteen, brand-new, and totally inexperienced, and yet…she bargained two of the most unbearable headaches I’ve ever met into submission within an hour. I had my suspicions then.”

“Suspicions of what?” Zuko asks, on edge again. “I had no idea you had such a favorable opinion of her.”

“How could I not? She’s the breath of fresh air that very few of us Councilpeople will admit that this country needs.” Ngam lets out a sigh that feels purposeful somehow. “And I had my suspicions that she was going to be a whole lot more than a junior ambassador someday. Clearly, I was correct.”

“Well, yes.”

“Which is why I’m concerned with ensuring that the road ahead of her is as smooth as possible.” Ngam tilts his head down to look at Zuko above the rims of his bifocals. “Giving an adjustment period, no matter how torturous to the two of you, gives the country time to get used to her, which will make it all that much easier for her to keep doing what she is so obviously skilled at once she’s crowned.”

“You said this was _personal.”_

“Yes, well, the personal side of things could get me thrown in prison for impertinence.”

“This ought to be good,” Zuko mutters under his breath; he doesn’t mean for Ngam to hear him, but he knows he has when the Councilman stiffens. “Please, enlighten me.”

“Well…it’s just...” Ngam winces before the words are even out. “Both you and the Ambassador are…well, _young._ Quite possibly unprepared to handle everything that comes with such a, erm, _permanent_ decision. An unstable royal marriage often makes an unstable nation, and I…wasn’t sure if either of you would hold up under the strain of navigating a marriage and a volatile political environment at the same time.”

Zuko pauses to consider and, grudgingly, has to admit to himself that it makes sense. “So you were attempting to safeguard our happiness for the sake of politics?”

“Well, essentially, yes.” Ngam’s cheeks color – it’s almost an amusing display, red cheeks on the stoic old statesman. “My wife and I married at your age and it took us well over half a decade to stop tearing at each other’s throats every time either one of us opened our mouth.” He chuckles fondly, as if this incredibly worrisome revelation isn’t anything at all. “We were quite like you – young, impulsive, passionate, rather mad about each other. We were certain we’d combust if we did not marry immediately. Turned out that we would’ve done so either way, so…” Ngam shrugs. “Given how much more there is riding on your marriage than there ever was on mine, I thought I’d use my unusual position to…leverage the situation against such an outcome.”

“So you were using your political clout as an excuse to meddle in my affairs.”

“I’m sorry to tell you that your affairs aren’t ever going to be entirely yours again,” Ngam says patiently. “Whom you marry, and when, has a great deal of ramifications for the Fire Nation’s governance. While I am entirely in support of your choice, controversial or not, I’m not going to let you two spend the first years of your marriage attempting to kill each other while the country burns around you.”

“So…”

“You’ve found yourself a magnificent woman, Lord Zuko.” Ngam reaches over to pat Zuko’s arm and he’s so shocked that he doesn’t remember to be offended at the flagrant breach of protocol – his own reckless disregard for it has, clearly, loosened the Council’s adherence, as well. “But I’m not sure that you’re entirely ready for her yet.”

“Councilman, I’m fairly certain that I never will be.”

“That,” Ngam says with a cryptic smile, “may be the wisest thing you’ve ever said.”

He’s gone without another word.


	21. Epicrisis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara and Zuko mark the second anniversary of their official courtship with some light sneaking-around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently the definitions I've been finding at randomword.com are inaccurate sometimes, but I like them, so I'm keeping them. This is one of those.
> 
> Also, I think this should be clear from context, but Tan Baojin is a fictional character of the ladykiller type from a FN classic which I made up for this. To expand upon the reference made later in this chapter: Baojin is cursed with irresistibility and destined never to fall in love. This has zero basis in canon but I like it so I’m keeping it.

**_Epicrisis_ **

**_Noun – the appreciation of literature_ **

****

**_**_ ** ****

**_Two Years Later_ ** ****

_Sixty-four days, six hours, and thirty-two minutes._

That’s how long Zuko and Katara’s ever-present menagerie of chaperones (who really feel more like spectators most days) has been successful in its valiant attempts to keep their courtship as cordially chilly as is possible by the time the arrival of some big-shot Earth Kingdom dignitary manages to distract them enough for Katara to pull Zuko into an alcove and kiss him breathless.

“That,” she pants when she breaks the kiss, “was a _long_ time coming.”

“No kidding.” Zuko untangles his fingers from her hair so his hand will be free to skirt the side of her face. “I think that’s the longest no-kiss streak they’ve ever managed.”

“Seriously. I thought I was going to shrivel up like a prune if I couldn’t get away from them, and I’m not even the touchy one in this relationship.”

“I am _not” –_ Zuko rests his chin on her shoulder with a smug smile that Katara can’t see – “touchy.”

She rubs his back and laughs softly at the way he all but collapses into her when she does. “Okay,” she acquiesces. “I can humor you, given the occasion.”

“Doesn’t feel like much of an occasion when I’m barely even allowed to speak to you,” Zuko grumbles.

“Oh, shush. It’s not _that_ bad.”

Zuko releases her and stands, his eyes downcast. “You don’t have to tell yourself that, Katara.”

“Really, it’s not,” she starts before her face falls, too. “I mean…it’s only one more year, and I can take it.”

“Then you’re a much better person than I am,” Zuko replies, trying and failing not to let the bitter edge of his voice sharpen.

“No, I’m just better at biting my tongue.” Katara crosses her arms. “I’m obviously not happy about it either, but if it’s the only way I’ll be allowed to be with you, I’m not going to complain.” Her eyes dart to a fixed point somewhere in the vague distance and she smiles sheepishly. “Besides, this whole mess has had its moments.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“It’s almost like sneaking around again.”

“Yeah, but harder,” Zuko huffs.

Their relationship didn’t change much for its becoming official, save for the introduction of the ever-present chaperones who’ve become the bane of their existence. They’re supposedly there for the prevention of unwanted heir-production and the protection of the future Fire Lady’s safety, a practice mandated after a few too many succession crises and a handful of strategic matches that soured after the young lady ran back to her family claiming cruelty on the part of her intended, but to Zuko and Katara the chaperones are nothing more than a headache. Under the watchful eyes of the committee put together in accordance with court etiquette to supervise and direct the couple’s courtship, they aren’t allowed to touch (unless it’s deemed proper for Zuko to offer Katara his arm as they walk), can’t be alone together, and can scarcely so much as laugh without attracting the razor-sharp glares of whichever unlucky maid is forced to chaperone their meeting that day. They may dine or walk or take tea together, but only with proper supervision, only where and when it is deemed appropriate, and only after being given the express permission of the committee.

“But that’s the fun of it, isn’t it?” Katara offers. “It’s a challenge. Keeps us on our toes.”

“You and I have very different ideas of ‘fun,’ but…sure.” Zuko pulls Katara to his chest because he’s already wasted too much of this precious, incredibly-fleeting time alone.

Katara’s arms find their way around his waist and her cheek presses to his chest. “And what would your idea of fun be?”

“Come back to me this time next year and I’ll show you.”

“ _Zuko!”_ Katara squeals indignantly, thumping his chest, and he has to press his finger to her lips to remind her that they’re trying to _evade_ detection, not invite it. It’s not a very firm gesture, though, when he’s laughing too.

“I have no idea where that came from,” he admits sheepishly, his cheeks flushing. “Sorry. That was inappropriate.”

“I don’t mind, Zuko. I just think it’s amusing that all of this time apart has turned you into some kind of Tan Baojin.”

“Someone’s been reading,” he teases, kissing her forehead again. “Not exactly an apt comparison, but I’m impressed.”

“Well, I’ve got to learn this stuff if I want to keep up in court, right?” Katara’s arms find their way around his waist again. “I asked one of the archivists to recommend the classics that people would most likely reference in conversation after one too many references to _Love Amongst the Dragons_ went over my head.” She grimaces, though he can’t see her expression change. “You’d be surprised how many people turn that play into political analogies.”

“No, I wouldn’t. There’s a reason everyone around here has seen it so many times.” Zuko gives her hip a squeeze. “Anyways, this archivist told you to read _The Tale of Tan Baojin?_ Weird. Everyone has to read that book in school and I’ve never met someone who doesn’t absolutely hate it.”

“The archivist didn’t,” Katara chuckles. “I can’t really say whether I liked it or not, but I guess it stuck with me if I remembered it well enough to reference him, right?”

“Sure. But I’m no Tan Baojin,” Zuko replies. “If I were, it probably wouldn’t have taken three years and a swift kick in the pants to convince me to tell you how I felt about you.”

Katara cranes her neck to kiss him, though she can only reach his chin from this angle. “True.” When he loosens his grip on her waist, she backs away enough to kiss him properly. “He probably would’ve burnt this place to the ground if someone had told him to wait three years to be with the love of his life, though, so I think that’s a plus.”

“Unlikely, considering that Tan Baojin’s whole deal was being cursed never to find true love, but I get the point.”

  
“Are we really spending the first time we’ve had alone together in months arguing about a _book?”_

“I mean…I guess?” Zuko’s hands trace the ridges of her spine and she shivers at the welcome warmth of his hands. “I’d rather be kissing you, but I can’t say that I mind.”

“Well, you _should have just-“_

“Katara, I _really_ don’t mind if you want to-“

“ _-told me.”_

“But-“

“You make a good point,” she adds, her hand taking her cheek’s place against his chest. “This might have to hold us over until the wedding, after all.”

Privately, he thinks he’ll combust sooner than he’ll wait the three hundred and sixty-five days before they’re allowed to marry (and it won’t be one day later) to kiss her again, but he doesn’t see fit to say so – not when it’ll just make the inevitable difficulty of finding time alone more upsetting. Instead, he rests his right hand against her cheek and lifts it ever-so-slightly so he can kiss her, his free arm settling solidly at the small of her back.

Talking is the one thing no one’s tried to prevent the soon-to-be ruling couple of the Fire Nation from doing lately, but – as Zuko has learned in the two agonizing years of supervision they’ve endured thus far – sometimes the best thing to say is still nothing at all.


	22. Garniteforous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had to write the engagement chapter eventually, didn't I?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cries in almost-done-with-RoD*

**_Garniterforous_ **

**_Adjective – bearing garnets_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

The fifth anniversary of the war’s end is heralded with as much pomp as anyone could expect and, somehow, not nearly as much as anyone actually _had._ Some ambitious officials (mostly ones whose wives and daughters and mistresses bemoaned the lack of a social calendar in post-war Caldera the most openly) had recommended a full week of celebrations – parades and performances and cultural events in the daytime, dancing and banqueting at night – but, after Zuko firmly shot them down, they’d had their seven days of festivites cut to two. It’s too important an opportunity to host and impress and butter up world leaders and diplomats to cancel entirely, but Zuko has always hated the idea of bringing so much attention to a devastating conflict which his country had instigated; the celebrations are always as pared-down as is possible without being flagrantly impolite. Usually, he sticks to a one-day event.

He hadn’t bothered to haggle the Council down from two days this year, though. His reasons for doing so, though, are far more personal than anyone realizes.

Zuko has to start the proceedings, naturally, on the opening day of the festival, so he doesn’t quite see the reason for his desire to extend the celebrations another day when she arrives. He hears her name announced, though, and his heart thuds heavily, a constant reminder of the weight he wears in a sheath at his side. (It’s so untraditional to be armed at a banquet that anyone who notices it will doubtless be clued in to what he’s planning, but he’s not particularly concerned about the element of surprise.)

It has been two years and six months and, tecnically, no one told Zuko that he had to wait to _propose._ It seems only practical that they be ready to marry the very day that they are permitted and a wedding can’t be planned overnight. And this might be as good a chance as any if he doesn’t want the prying eyes of chaperones or the pressure to get the words out in the thirty seconds they have before they’re discovered when he does.

Truthfully, he’s been waiting for the right moment nearly since the beginning of their courtship: this dagger, its bluish mother-of-pearl hilt studded with garnets in the traditional Fire Nation fashion and lapis lazuli because it seems unfair not to throw in something blue even though it isn’t typical, has been ready for Katara since the third month of their three-year delay. But it would’ve been an agonizing weight at her belt if she’d had the promise of his unending allegiance with two years left to wait until he could pledge it; he’d wanted the wait to be _less_ painful, not moreso. It’s going to be a delicate subterfuge to pull this off in the space of their one permitted dance when he’s already so nervous that he’s likely to let the dagger slip from his clammy hands, but there’s no doubt in his mind that it has to be tonight.

“Hey, stranger.”

Shortly after he’s opened the proceedings, Zuko turns at a tap on his shoulder as he makes his way through the crowd. “Hm?”

Katara crosses her arms. “You look like you’re going to faint, Zuko. Have all evening. Are you good?”

  
“Uhhh.” He takes in the sight of her sky-blue hanfu – Fire Nation cut, Water Tribe color – without nearly enough time to process it. “Um. I…yes?”

Katara knows exactly why he’s gone so goggle-eyed and she laughs, taking his arm even though he hasn’t offered it. “Seriously, are you okay?”

“Fine,” he says unconvincingly. “It’s just…a little nerve-wracking.”

“Well, I can understand that.” She knows that the chaperones haven’t bothered tonight and no one in attendance is going to think it strange if the Fire Lord is seen acting a little more than usually familiar with the woman he’s going to marry, so she rises on her toes to press a kiss to his scarred cheek. “But we get to be away from the chaperones, right?”

He flushes at the very public demonstration of her affection but forces himself not to let it distract him. “Are you doing that just to torment me?”

“Doing what?” Katara asks innocently.

“Kissing me where I can’t feel it.”

“Mm…maybe,” she admits, biting her lip. “Also, that cheek was closer to me.”

It was, but he still huffs in displeasure. She laughs again and leans against his offered arm, and it is not choice but gravity which pulls them into the crowd that is already dancing. As he pulls her into his arms, it feels as if they are the center of a crowd which orbits around them, and yet it fades from his notice. This isn’t a crowded party when he locks his eyes on hers; it is an alcove full of potted plants and a panted, tender exhortation, it is a snow-dusted plaza in Ba Sing Se, it is the corner behind a tapestry where they’ve retreated to steal a kiss. He feels the weight of Katara’s engagement dagger at his hip as he moves but it isn’t enough to ground him when this, for a single moment, is everywhere they have been and everywhere that they will be if he manages to pull this off.

“Zuko,” she says, and her soft voice cuts through the fog of his thoughts like the beam of a lighthouse. Her hands are gentle at his waist and her smile like the summer breeze – he “Zuko,” Katara says, and her voice cuts through the fog of his thoughts like the beam of a lighthouse. Her hands are so gentle at his waist that he can barely feel them, and her smile is like the summer breeze. He hasn’t seen her so happy in months but tonight, she seems so light that she could float, hovering an inch or two above the floor as she danced, and no one would notice anything out of the ordinary.

“Yes?”

He extends his arm to release her and, as is customary, her hand brushes that of the nearest dancer as she reaches out. Their hands clasp and they walk three rotations around one another, wrists pressed together, before returning to their partners; when Katara does, she meets his eyes and one hand settles on his chest. “I love you,” she says simply. “That’s all.”

It’s as sweet and as straightforward a gesture as she could offer, but Zuko briefly wonders if she _wants_ him to keel over dead on the spot. Self-control is but a treasured memory now, when she’s in his arms like this, looking at him as if he is the reason she wakes in the morning, and he doesn’t particularly care that it’s as unromantic as it is ungraceful when she blurts out, “marry me.”

“Well, I was planning on it,” Katara teases, then her eyes widen. “Wait, you…you meant that as in… _actually?”_

_Well, I guess this is happening now._

“I had a whole thing planned, but…yeah. I did.” He smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. That was supposed to be a lot more romantic.”

“Oh.” Katara closes her eyes as if she’s trying to convince herself that she’s awake. “ _Oh.”_

They still have to dance, of course, to keep up appearances, but he manages to free one of his hands so he can cup her cheek. “It feels like we’ve already waited forever,” he tells her, and neither of them notices that they’ve stopped moving in the middle of a crowded ballroom. “If you haven’t changed your mind, I don’t want to make you wait any longer than you have to. So…I thought I’d leave some time to plan the wedding, if….if you-“

  
She pulls him down by the shoulderpiece of his robes, sending it ajar as she kisses him without a thought in the world for the hundreds of people who might be witnessing this.

“ _Yes,”_ she says, out-of-breath and flushed with excitement when they break the kiss. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Really?”

“You’ve been carrying that knife for two years,” she teases, her hand settling against his chest again. “I noticed.”

“Oh. I didn’t think I’d been that obvious.”

“No, I thought it was sweet,” Katara reassures him. “Just…having a reminder that you intended to stick it out, even though it was agonizing.”

“I always have.” A couple apologizes profusely when the woman’s elbow collides with Zuko’s shoulder, and they begin to move again for fear of being trampled. “It’s almost embarrassing what I’m willing to do to be with you.”

“Kiss me behind tapestries?” Katara offers. “Carry a dagger for two years as if no one knows what it’s for when everyone does? Wait around when you could be with any other girl in the Fire Nation? Tell your entire council that you love me?” this part of the dance is less involved, so she rests her head against his chest.

_Ask me to kiss you when you thought I’d never say yes. Promote me so I could stay. Jump in front of lightning._

“Talk like a bad romance novel,” he adds. “Let you kiss me in a crowd of hundreds.”

“Twice,” Katara adds. “We did that twice.”

“Let you kiss me in a crowd of hundreds _twice.”_ She feels the press of his lips against his hair. “And you haven’t seen the half of it.”

“Oh?”

  
“Nope.”

She finds it hard to believe that he could give her more than he already has, but somehow, she believes him.


	23. Cachinnate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MARRIAGE!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: this one gets a little...uh...rating change time! (No smut or nudity whatsoever but I also am very not subtle about the fact that they intend to meet in amorous congress. Whoops.)
> 
> Anyways. They've waited three years, we've waited three...days...and it's time to get these idiots MARRIAGED! This chapter brought me joy :p

**_Cachinnate_ **

****

**_Verb – to laugh_ **

****

**_**_ **

****

When Katara’s imagined her wedding these past three years, she’s always thought it would produce the kind of overwrought emotion in her that’s far more suited to the heroines of the romance scrolls Zuko doesn’t like to admit that he reads than to a head of state such as she will be by the end of her wedding. She imagines tears: there will be tears in her eyes during the ceremony, of course; Zuko will brush his thumbs across her cheeks to catch them before he kisses her, and they will both be crying profusely by the reception. She will cry as they accept well-wishes at the reception, cry as they make the trip from the banquet hall to his-now-their chambers, cry when the door latches behind her-

Well. Suffice to say she imagines that she’ll be quite dehydrated by the time she first wakes as a married woman.

It had made sense to her at the time, when dreams had been all she had to keep herself afloat during the harder periods of their courtship. By their wedding day, she’ll have waited upwards of three years; back then, there was no question in her mind that the end of that wait would be such an emotional time as to teeter on the edge of melodrama. She’s always been the type to wear her heart on her sleeve, after all, so it isn’t much of a stretch.

But reality, as it sometimes is and most often isn’t, is better than any of her overwrought-romantic-heroine fantasies.

Fire Nation wedding ceremonies are serious affairs, but neither Zuko nor Katara can stop smiling, exchanging sheepish looks as they try to pretend they’re giving this moment the solemn reverence that the Fire Sages think it deserves. Reverence, Katara figures, is due, but solemnity would seem entirely wrong. They’ve done their time with that, she thinks, on all of those dreary chaperoned outings where she could scarcely so much as laugh without a scathing look from their supervising maid; this is the reward for all the heartache they’ve endured, and it seems ridiculous not to enjoy it for all that it is worth. She bites her lip, trying not to smile, but it doesn’t help much when Zuko is doing the same and she nearly bursts out laughing as the head Fire Sage drones on and he presses his lips into a line, very obviously trying as hard not to smile as she is.

By the time they are permitted to kiss, maintaining any semblance of seriousness is an entirely lost cause, and she doesn’t stop herself from laughing when they break the quick, chaste kiss they’d kept short for propriety’s sake. They make the trip to the reception hall in record time and as soon as they’ve taken their places on the platform above the guests where they’ll be seated for the time being, Katara abandons all pretense of composure. 

“I thought you were going to crack,” she says, her voice nearly breaking with the effort of holding back laughter so she can get the words out. “You looked like you were about to lose it and I was just crossing my fingers that you wouldn’t because _I_ was about to lose it too and…and…” a watery, out-of-breath chuckle escapes her lips before she can stop it. “I just…oh, Spirits, how much trouble am I going to be in if-if…”

She never gets to finish. That bout of laughter she’s been fighting since the ceremony began finally proves too powerful an adversary for her, and she feels Zuko’s hand settle at the small of her back as she laughs to the point of wheezing.

“Up here? None,” he says, gently amused. “And I _was_ going to lose it. Could barely keep a straight face.”

Once the worst of it has passed and Katara is composed enough to hold a conversation again, her arm finds its way around Zuko’s waist and she leans her head against his shoulder with little concern for the elaborate hairstyle that she’s probably ruining by doing so. “I thought I was going to cry today,” she comments, utterly contented as she shifts her position so she won’t give her neck a crick. “Instead I was trying so hard not to laugh that I barely heard a word the Fire Sage said.”

“It really wasn’t anything important, just a lot of speeches about how important it would be that I conduct myself with the honor you deserved to be shown and that you gave me heirs and that sort of thing.”  
  


“Oh, so the standard fare.” Katara shakes her head. “I could probably have guessed.”

“Probably.” Zuko lightly squeezes her hip. “Either way, we’re out of the woods now, so you can laugh if you want to. Get it out of your system, you know?”

She shakes her head against his shoulder and the ornament dangling from her hair lightly whacks the back of Zuko’s head; neither can help but laugh at that, either. “I think I’m okay now,” she says.

“All right.” He turns his head to kiss her hairline.

This would be the time for one of those half-crazed declarations of love that a younger Zuko had been so fond of, but it doesn’t seem to fit. This moment is buoyant; excess words would only drag it down and besides, he’s said all he needs to say in the way his hand rests at Katara’s hip, and she in the way her head leans against his shoulder. There’s no reason to speak up.

“Zuko?” Katara asks after a few moments of watching the guests come and go below their platform.

“Yeah?”

“I think,” she says lightly, “that I am very, very happy tonight.”

“So am I,” he agrees.

**

“And then – and _then-“_ Katara pauses, laughter bubbling up in her chest and bursting out before she can contain it, staying until it steals the air from her lungs and she has to stop to gasp for breath – “oh, I was _so_ close to…to…”

Sokka, seated across a table from his sister, raises his eyebrows. Suki looks a little worried and even Toph seems slightly concerned – none of them have ever seen Katara dissolve helplessly into hysterical laughter so many times in the space of five minutes, nor with such intensity. The couple of the hour, naturally, migrated to their friends’ table the moment they were allowed to mingle with the guests again, but Katara’s barely been able to get out a coherent sentence in the entirety of their visit. This is, apparently, quite disturbing to their erstwhile friends. 

“Is…is she okay?” Aang asks in what he probably thinks is a whisper but…really isn’t. Katara tries to nod, but, considering that she’s bent double over the table and earning herself the scandalized glares of every guest at the surrounding ones, it’s not a very convincing gesture. 

“She’s fine,” Zuko tells him, and pats her back (which only makes her laugh harder). “Just…”

“Happy,” she wheezes, and as worrisome as her beet-red face and shortness of breath evidently is to her friends (Suki looks like she’s five seconds from calling for a medic), her sincerity is undeniable.

**

It is safe to say that there are no tears when the door latches behind her at the end of the night. She’s no longer laughing uncontrollably, but she still lets out a shriek of delight when he sweeps her into his arms (it’s a surprisingly graceful, considering that the dress she’s wearing has to weigh thirty pounds), bridal-style, and spins her before setting her back down so ungracefully – in stark contrast to the way he’d lifted her – that she has to catch herself on the canopy of his bed so as not to stumble. It only makes them both laugh, though, and she barely manages to get out a snarky comment about how inauspicious it must be, nearly being dropped on one’s wedding day, before their lips find each other again and layers upon ridiculous layers fall away. It takes far longer than it should, given that their lips don’t part for a moment and they can’t actually see any of the fastenings they’re undoing, but at least their mutual consternation at the difficulties of undoing them are a source of amusement. They both laugh – a little less uncontrollably this time – when they break apart and see the mess they’ve made of their obscenely expensive formal outergarments. Katara might’ve been a bit overzealous in the removal of Zuko’s shoulderpiece, if the way it’s somehow made its way all the way to the door is any indication, and there’s a tear in the delicate silk of the robe that Katara wore over her hanfu that wasn’t there before.

Clothes are strewn everywhere but, given the number of layers involved in both of their wedding outfits, they’re both still fully-dressed; Zuko is sheepishly examining the tear in her robe to see if it could be repaired; no one is crying, no tender words or soft caresses were involved in what little undressing has thus far taken place. Katara hasn’t once been breathless for any reason but the lack of oxygen she can take in when her husband kisses her, and her smile is more mischevious than anything. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, how she’d imagined that her wedding night would be, but there’s something completely _right_ in the way it turned out that she can’t pin down.

“Worth the wait?” she asks, playfully biting her lip. She doesn’t miss the way Zuko’s eyes follow her every movement.

“Well, obviously,” he says, with a smile that’s neither sentimental nor lustful as he brushes her hair from her face and kisses her forehead. “I almost can’t believe that we made it.”

“When we both thought we were going to waste away and die of impatience before we made it down the aisle?” Katara arches an eyebrow. “Yeah, no kidding.”

“I have a _wife.”_ An incredulous smile plays at his lips. “Isn’t that crazy?”

“I have a _husband_. Isn’t that crazier?” she teases, playing with the collar of the light cotton under-robe he’s still wearing.

He picks up on the teasing lilt in her tone and plays along. “You know what’s crazier?”

Katara backs around the canopy banister closest to her, gripping it with both hands before she leans around it to peer over at Zuko. “What’s crazier?”

“The fact that I have a wife and you have a husband and both wife and husband are still fully clothed,” he says with as much feigned innocence as he can muster before he bursts out laughing.

Katara has long known that, though there are many adjectives that could easily be applied to Zuko, ‘suave’ is not and will never be one of them.

“I wasn’t aware you were in such a rush,” she teases, biting her lip again just to watch the way his eyes drop to her lips. “Which is too bad, because my maids insisted that I wear one of those awful Fire Nation bridal slips under my gown.”

Zuko’s eyes widen. “You mean the ones with all the tiny buttons that are supposed to take, like, forever to undo?”

“Those ones, yes.” Katara crosses her arms. “I tried to refuse, but they wouldn’t budge.”

“They really do like making my life difficult,” Zuko mutters.

**

“How many have you gotten undone?”

“Four.”

“How many are left?”

“Um…” Zuko pauses for a few seconds to count. “…twenty-six?”

“You’re _kidding.”_

“Hey, I _offered_ to cut it-“

“You are _not_ cutting it.”

“But these buttons are _tiny.”_

“We’ve waited three years, Zuko. You can wait another half-hour.”

“You say that like _you_ aren’t the one who’s asking me how many I have left,” he points out.

“Well, yes, but it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Principles have always been _your_ thing,” he grouses, but nevertheless, he returns to his work.

**

Sunlight streams through the gauzy curtains above Zuko’s bed – well, _their_ bed, now, an idea which Katara still can’t quite wrap her head around – and she mutters incoherently in discontent at its assault on her eyes. “Too _early,”_ she whines, rolling over despite the arm pinning her in place.

“Katara, it’s _nine.”_ Zuko brushes a tangled mass of curls out of her face now that she’s facing him again. “That’s hardly early even by your standards.”

“Still too early,” she says, but she’s smiling now and she leans up to kiss him. “Morning.”

“Sleep well?” he teases.  
  
Katara, tired as she is, reaches behind herself for a pillow and smacks him with it, finally cracking a smile in return at his indignant squawk of protest. “You know the answer to that.”

“ _I_ am not the one who woke up at _four in the morning-“_

“You could’ve said no and gone back to sleep!” Katara protests.

“Well, yeah, but why on earth would I ever have done that?” he props himself up on his elbow to get a better look at Katara.

“Case in point.” She’s still not quite awake, but a round of mid-morning banter is proving to be about as effective as a strong cup of tea in waking Katara; she stretches against the pillows with a luxurious yawn. “It was a mutual decision to get no sleep.”

“Yeah. Four hours. I counted.”

Katara thinks for a moment and then shakes her head. “No, I got five. Two to four, and then six to nine.” 

“I didn’t sleep until seven,” Zuko admits, and it takes Katara a moment to realize why his cheeks redden at the confession.

“Because you were watching me sleep?

“Because I was watching you sleep,” he sighs defeatedly. “And in my defense-“

  
She leans up to kiss him again. “You don’t have to defend yourself, Zuko. It’s kinda sweet.”

“The only issue being the fact that we’re supposed to leave for Ember Island in two hours and _someone_ just woke up.”

Katara tilts her head. “We’re already packed. I could just lay here until ten-thirty, throw on clothes, and get on the ship with no problem-“

“The issue being,” he says, tracing the line of her arm, “that both of us are relatively easy to distract right now.”

“Well, you’re not wrong, but I have a feeling that it wouldn’t hurt anyone if we were…a few minutes late.” Katara gives him one of her Looks. “ _Fashionably_ late.”

“People would talk.”

“How can you go from flirty to _people would talk_ so quickly?” Katara crosses her arms. “And why does it matter? Aren’t they supposed to encourage the production of heirs?”

“That is _not_ what-“

“Shhh. No one needs to know that.” Katara presses her finger to his lips to drive the point home and laughs when he takes her hand and kisses her fingertips, one by one. “Besides, they made us wait three years, so I think we can make them wait twenty minutes.”

“You have a point there,” Zuko agrees. “But…maybe _try_ not to be late?”

Katara laughs softly. “We’ll see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a 1k+ word outtake of this chapter that is solely about unbuttoning that stupid slip and while it isn’t smut, I also am not going to post it for fear that my parents will someday find this account and dunk on me for posting slightly sexc(tm) material (slightly moreso than this...), so it will forever remain in the depths of the Word document i’m using to write this.


	24. Chromaticity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue! Some SWT shenanigans for your viewing pleasure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all SO MUCH for your enthusiasm and support - you made writing this so much fun. I wasn’t expecting much from RoD and it’s become one of my favorite projects to date, largely thanks to all of you, so...all credit goes to you for this one. :p again, THANK YOU!

**_Chromaticity_ **

**_Adjective – the quality of color_ **

****

**_**_ **

**_“_** It’s...” for a moment, Zuko struggles for words, gaping like a fish. “It’s…it’s _stunning.”_

“It really is,” Katara agrees, her gloved fingers digging insistently into the thick layers of fur and sealskin of his sleeve. Almost shy, she turns to look up at him. “I’m glad I got to show you this.”

“Yeah,” he says, stepping behind her so he can rest his head on her shoulder. Though they’re both in far too much clothing to feel anything, he wraps his arms around her waist and joins them in front so they rest against her stomach. “Me too.”

Normally, Katara would have words for this moment – a legend or childhood memory to share, something to ground the present in the context of the past – but she finds, curiously, that this moment doesn’t particularly need grounding, or contextualization. It is enough that it _is,_ that she is here with her husband in the place of her upbringing and the sky above them is painted in watercolor greens and purples. The Aurora, seen through a fresh set of eyes, is every bit as awe-inspiring as it was in her childhood, and this moment does not need to take its place in a framework when it stands alone so well.

“Thank you,” she says softly, her hands joining with his clasped ones. “For being here with me.”

His lips – freezing, but she doesn’t mind – find an exposed sliver of skin behind her parka’s hood. “You know there’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

“Oh, really.” It’s been a while since Zuko has been so openly sappy with any regularity, and she finds herself a little smug at having inspired a resurgence. “Not even a tropical beach with minimal clothing, sharing one of those coconut shells full of mango juice?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t mind being warm right now,” he admits, “but this is better.”

“I agree.” She leans back into his chest, covered in too many layers of fabric to be as warm as it usually is. “Warm is overrated.”

“I can’t say I agree, but-“

“It _is.”_ Katara turns to face him, eyes bright. “Besides, human bodies are naturally quite good at keeping themselves warm.”

“…mine must’ve missed the memo,” Zuko huffs. “Because it is _not_ keeping itself warm.”

“It probably needs help,” Katara says matter-of-factly. “Which means that you need to cuddle with me.” She tilts her chin up a few inches with an impish smile. “For your own safety and well-being.”

“Sounds nice.” He huffs out a sigh that clouds the frigid air in front of them and sinks down against her shoulder until he’s barely supporting his own weight anymore.

“Mmhm.” Katara takes one last look at the painted sky before she gently unclasps his hands from her waist and takes one of them to lead him back towards the home that, if the way it stands empty during their absences from the Southern Water Tribe is any indication, is all but theirs. “I take it that means you’re ready to go in?”

“I don’t do well with cold,” he admits without an ounce of shame. “You knew that.”

She laughs, unrestrained in the knowledge that the snow blanketing every surrounding surface will muffle the sound enough to keep it from traveling. “I did, which is why I’m indulging you.” In truth, _he_ is the one doing the indulging - they’ve been out here a good hour already, which is probably fifty more minutes than Zuko would’ve chosen to stay no matter how beautiful the reward might be – but she doesn’t mention that. “Also, you’re a _firebender._ How are you so freezing all the time?”

Zuko’s shoulders visibly slump in relief when they open the door to a burst of warm indoor air. “Some of us were raised in warm climates, you know.”

“But you can _control your own temperature._ I don’t get how…oh, never mind.” It’s not many steps to the relatively-secluded section of the home where they’ve elected to keep their bedrolls, and Katara flops down against the furs with a sigh as she shucks off her outermost layers. “You just wanted an excuse to cuddle with me, didn’t you?”

“I mean, yeah, but the idea that I would pretend to be cold to get one-“

“Is not all that far-fetched.” Katara hikda out her arms and he all but collapses into them with the longsuffering sigh of a man who’d just done something much more taxing than observing the Southern Lights. She pats his shoulder, amused to find that he hasn’t even bothered to take off his cumbersome outdoor parka. “Nevertheless, I’m a very indulgent wife, and I’m not about to complain.”

“You are _not.”_

“Oh, really?” Katara teases. “Tell me, husband, how exactly I have failed to properly indulge you.”

“You haven’t, but the fact remains that you are very demanding.”

“Only because you are,” she shoots back, cheeks still bright from the cold. “Ask anyone. You,” she says, thumbing his nose, “are _very difficult.”_

“I will accept that,” he sighs, rolling over so his arm and leg and half of his torso pin her in place. “If you can keep me from waking up as an icicle.”

“Again, I can’t understand why that would ever be a problem when you have that inner fire thing.” Katara pouts. “ _I_ never had that option.”

“I’d offer to let you borrow mine, but it’s not working right now,” he says, with a muted noise of approval in the back of his throat when Katara begins to undo his hair. He’s not as happy, though, when she lifts his limbs, heavy with exhaustion, to remove his parka. “Don’t I need that to keep warm?”

“No, it won’t actually help. It’s supposed to be best if your skin touches, but we aren’t dying of hypothermia, so I think just inner layers should be fine.”

“But-“

“Sharing body heat, remember? You won’t get cold.”

“Fine,” he huffs, though she knows he’s not really as grumpy as he likes to pretend to be. “If you say so.”

Katara pulls the thick fur bedspread up around their shoulders once they’re down to one layer. Zuko buries his face in Katara’s sternum and she ruffles his hair. “It’s not like we’ve never done this before. You know how it works.”

“True,” he concedes. They’ve been here a handful of times since the wedding last year, enough to have a designated place to stay, but he’s still not quite used to it. “But if it gets you to do _this,_ I feel like I have a compelling reason not to get used to it.”

She presses her lips to his clothed shoulder. “Fair enough.”

“Seriously?”

She moves down a few inches in the bedroll so she can reach his chest, and repeats the motion. “Yup.”

“Are you…”

“Mmhm.” He always knows when she’s trying to make him say the _thing_. (She likes it when he says the _thing_ , which he’ll never understand, but he can’t exactly deny her.)

“Katara?”

“Mm…yes?” she crawls back up in the bedroll to kiss his scar.

“Kiss me where I can feel it?”

“Nuh-uh, what do we say?”

“ _Please?”_

“Well, you could’ve just asked,” she teases, and obliges.

(It’s a pointless exercise when there’s never any question whether she’ll give him the kiss or not. She’d give him the world if she could. Maybe she does this because she can’t.

Either way, she thinks as his breathing begins to slow and he drifts into the kind of sleep he’s only known since he had someone to share it with, it gets the point across rather well.)

He’s sprawled across her chest like a spider, and she can’t help but smile at how quickly he’s managed to go from whining to teasing to fast-asleep. She brushes her hand down the line of his bicep before it comes to rest in the center of his back, and she tucks him under her chin. “Sleep well,” she murmurs when she knows he’s asleep, pressing an unobtrusive kiss to his hairline.

She knows he will. With her, he nearly always does.

****


End file.
